Felaheen a-3

by Jon Courtenay Grimwood

  "You love it really," said the fox, who hated Orientalist kitsch. But then Tiri refused to buy into a rule that defined everything over a century as classic by default.

  The table Raf used was on the terrace and he sat facing the street, because this allowed him to ignore a bank of elevators inside. There were three elevators, framed in brass, with deco moulding and coloured enamel around their doors. Only directors of the Third Circle were allowed to use these, which was fine with Raf because, as the son of a pasha, he automatically qualified for a C3 corner office with magnificent views of Iskandryia's Eastern Harbour.

  Raf had his own opinion about his parentage but as no one else seemed bothered he was attempting to keep this to himself.

  Between the harbour wall and Raf's office stood Place Zaghloul, so his windows also overlooked palm trees, a busy bus station and a stark plinth on which rested Zaghloul Pasha, nationalist leader and the man who drove the British from Egypt in 1916.

  As befitted his rank as a bey, Raf's office featured a Bokhara rug, a white leather sofa, a filing cabinet made from mahogany and edged with brass and a large, predominantly blue-and-pink Naghi of the square outside, painted in 1943 and borrowed from the Khedival institute in Al Qahirah. What the room lacked was a computer or telephone, files to put in the elegant cabinet and any documents of real importance.

  No one expected directors to work, least of all Madame Nordstrom, who in her twenty-fourth year as office manager of C3 regarded all directorships as entirely token, much like the salary. So he spent his mornings in the café downstairs, an arrangement that satisfied both Ingrid Nordstrom and Le Trianon's maître d' but was beginning to irritate Raf. Not because he disliked drinking cappuccino or reading the papers but because, every morning as Raf was shown to his table on the terrace, Tiri popped up to mutter emotional institutionalization. It was a phrase with which they were both far too familiar.

  Most of the visitors to the famous café drank espresso or sticky, mud-thick shots of Turkish mocha; but then, what with it being February, everyone else ate their breakfast indoors.

  Only Raf insisted on a pavement table.

  For a while, a matter of weeks only, he'd had bodyguards to hold the tourists at bay and protect him from fundamentalists, crazies, German agents of the Thiergarten and anyone else who might be likely to attack the Governor of El Iskandryia; but that was before he resigned, when he had a different job.

  "Wrong," said the fox. "That was when you had a job. Working at the Third Circle doesn't really . . ."

  ". . . count," said someone, sitting herself down.

  Raf blinked.

  She was dressed entirely in grey, with a grey plait and minimal makeup. Her beauty had the fragility of old skin over fine bones, worn for so long she took it for granted. "No magic," she said. "You were talking to yourself. One of the many traits you share with your father."

  There was no real reply to that so instead Raf concentrated on his visitor. And even without his acute sense of smell he'd have noticed a stink of camphor rising from her elegant skirt and jacket, spotted the dust under the buckles on her black shoes.

  "Mostly I wear a uniform," said the woman, settling back into a chair. "These were what I could find . . . Your nostrils flared," she added by way of explanation. "Anyway I have a file on you. Augmented reflexes, heightened vision, hearing and smell . . . Ever since Khedive Tewfik sent me a copy I've been wanting to ask you if that also went for taste . . ."

  "Obviously," replied the fox.

  Raf took longer to think about it, studying the woman as he did so. She wore no jewellery, not even earrings. Her blusher was so immaculate as to be invisible. Her jacket well cut, with double stitching to the buttonholes. Although the most noticeable feature was a discreet bulge to one side where she wore a small holster clipped to the back of her hip.

  Something small but effective, like a .32 loaded with hollow point.

  "Impossible to judge," said Raf, returning to the question of taste. "Because, in the end, how do I know how things taste to you?"

  "How very Cartesian," said the woman and raised a finger. "Espresso," she told her waiter. "Make it a double and keep them coming." The man actually bowed, which marked the first time Raf had ever seen one of Le Trianon's waiters do that.

  "He's Ifriqiyan," she told Raf, pulling a cigarette case from a small crocodile-skin handbag as if this explained everything. Flipping open the case, she tapped out a Gauloise, one of the old-fashioned kind without filter. "You don't mind if I smoke." Her question was very much an afterthought, if it was a question. It sounded much more like a statement of fact.

  "Ashraf Bey," she said. "Colonel Ashraf al-Mansur, ex–Chief of Detectives, ex–Governor of El Iskandryia . . . You don't keep any of your jobs very long, do you?"

  "I have a very low boredom threshold." Raf's voice was deadpan.

  The woman laughed. "Good," she said. Dragging deep, she settled back in her chair and sighed, smoke softening her thin face and making her appear suddenly younger. Her age was indeterminate, somewhere over sixty but after that difficult to say.

  Expats and settlers, Raf had seen other women like her. Bodies kept lean by the heat and a diet of cigarettes and alcohol. Usually they were bottle blond with faces leathered by hard living and too much sun. Whoever she was, this woman was different. She'd let her hair go grey for a start.

  "Who are you?" Raf demanded.

  She shrugged. "Ask the waiter when he arrives." She nodded to the man bringing her coffee, so Raf asked. And what impressed Raf most was that the waiter looked to the woman, seeking her permission before answering. It took a lot to outrank a director of the Third Circle in a café directly below C3's head office. But it was becoming rapidly obvious to Raf that this person did.

  "You've heard about the attack on the Emir?"

  "Only what was on the news."

  "Half-truths and guesses," said Eugenie de la Croix. "All of it." She gazed at Raf, face intent. "What do you know about the Revolt of the Naked?"

  Raf's answer was honest, less than zero.

  "They took over Baghdad," said Eugenie. "After the death of Harun al-Rashid. An uprising of the poor made poorer by a dispute between Harun's sons over the succession. I don't approve of chaos," the woman said, "but sometimes it is deserved."

  "When was this?"

  "About twelve hundred years ago."

  Behind his shades Raf raised his eyebrows.

  "Quite," said Eugenie. "So why do I have your half brother Kashif swearing that something called the NR is behind the attack on your father?"

  "Because he's lying?" said Raf. "Always assuming he is my half brother . . ."

  Eugenie smiled. "So cynical," she said, "and you haven't even met him."

  "Nor do I intend to," said Raf. "And if I were you, I'd start with the Thiergarten. Berlin usually seems to be behind most problems."

  Eugenie shook her head firmly. "Not in Tunis," she said. "We have an agreement . . ."

  "Are you sure?" Raf took a sip of lukewarm coffee. "I thought the Thiergarten were a law unto themselves . . ." Popular rumour had Berlin's agents able to scale sheer walls and pass unseen through double-locked doors. A belief that sold papers and did Berlin no harm at all.

  "Believe me," said Eugenie. "I'm sure." She spoke like someone who had the negatives, which she probably did, or at least duplicates. Old and undoubtedly embarrassing. The fact the man in question was long dead would do nothing to make them less deadly. The Kaiser was very protective of his late father. Understandably, in the circumstances.

  "Then start with Kashif's suspects," Raf suggested. "See if they really could mount such an assassination attempt."

  "That's why I'm here."

  Raf looked at Eugenie.

  "I thought you might do it."

  "No way." He shook his head.

  "I suppose I could appeal to your sense of family duty," Eugenie said. "Or mention the fact your aunt's debts seem to have swallowed what little money she left, while yo
ur salary from the Third Circle is worth less than nothing. Then there's your boredom . . . Which one would work?"

  "None," Raf said.

  "He is your father."

  "My father was a backpacker from Sweden." Raf's voice was firm. "I'd give you more details but my mother forgot to get his name."

  "Ah yes," said the woman, "Per Lindstrom. I've heard that version . . ." She looked at him. "Some people," she said, "would be proud to call the Emir of Tunis their father."

  "A lunatic," said the fox. "Ruler of the only country not to sign the 2005 UN accord on biotechnology . . ."

  "Some people aren't me," said Raf, which sounded either too smug or more bitter than he intended, but Raf let the words hang anyway.

  It seemed that Eugenie was not looking for someone to guard the Emir, which had been Raf's first thought. He only understood why Eugenie was so offended by this idea when he realized she'd already taken that job for herself, along with her job as his head of security, not to mention his longest-serving aide.

  "Just as well," said Raf. "My reputation is overrated."

  For the first time since they'd met Eugenie smiled. "I've read your files," she said. "Explosives, counterintelligence, close-quarter combat . . ."

  "And if I said it was all lies?"

  "I wouldn't believe you. But those aren't the skills I need anyway. It's your other talents . . ."

  Raf looked blank.

  "You solved your aunt's murder," said Eugenie. "Faced down the Thiergarten. Got Zara's half brother aboard the Khedive's liner and had him take a war criminal into custody, in the face of Moscow, Paris and Berlin."

  "Yeah, right," said the fox, sotto voce. "You want to tell her how it really happened?"

  Raf shook his head.

  "What?" asked Eugenie.

  "I'm not doing it," Raf said.

  And somewhere inside his skull the fox grinned and kept grinning while Eugenie told Raf what she wanted and Raf explained exactly why it wasn't going to happen.

  "Wow," said the fox as they both watched Eugenie stalk away, slight heels clicking on the damp sidewalk. "That went well."

  CHAPTER 7

  Flashback

  "You'll need shoes."

  Somehow that wasn't quite what Sally had expected the Chinese man to say. Of course, at first, she didn't realize he was Chinese. She had that English ignorance of Far Eastern looks and took it for granted that as he was wearing a blue-checked sarong he had to be local, probably Malay and a fisherman. The fact his Ph.D. was in X-linked mutation and he'd been fired from Bayer-Rochelle for releasing details of his research on "GTPases and their influence on brain structure and cognitive ability," Sally didn't find out until later.

  "Why shoes?"

  "Because otherwise the coral will rip your feet to shreds." He nodded to a point a stone's throw out from the beach where the water switched from a medium to a pale blue. "The reef starts there," he said. "You'll be safe as long as you swim in shoes."

  The man spoke with a California drawl, interspersed with occasional words that sounded unbelievably English, as if he'd once worked for the Home Service. His wispy white beard could be found on bamboo scrolls in hotel shops across Singapore, which was where she'd landed.

  A taxi to Semberwang dropped her at the causeway, the stink of durian fruit and raw rubber thickening the air as she approached the Malay side of the straits and the jumbled buildings of Jahore Baru. A better smell altogether than the stink of hydrocarbons that had clung to her clothes in Singapore, that island of tigers where all the tigers were now dead.

  As Sally wondered whether to explain she'd thrown away her shoes the better to get in touch with her instincts, she saw Wu Yung's eyes refocus.

  "They with you?" he asked, glancing over her shoulder.

  Sally shook her head, not even bothering to turn. No one was with her and she was with no one. And that was how she intended to remain. All three of her guidebooks dealt with how to keep at bay unwelcome attention from local men. Only the Rough Guide had thought to mention that her real problem was likely to be other backpackers.

  "Hi . . ."

  Rehab is for Quitters read the blond boy's T-shirt and his shorts were the kind with long pockets and tabs with buckles. Slivers of doubt flecked his blue eyes.

  "How you doing?"

  The black guy with him stared through aviator shades so cheap they had to have been given away with some magazine. His silence could have been intentional but more likely resulted from a battered iPod he wore clipped to the waistband of his cut-down Fat Boys.

  "I'm Atal," said the blond boy and stuck out his hand. "Okay if we crash here too? We're out of dosh," he added by way of explanation.

  If the Chinese man noticed the Oyster Perpetual on Atal's skinny wrist he didn't mention it. Sally, however, made her glance obvious.

  "Fake," said Atal quickly, "from a market in Bangkok."

  It wasn't.

  "Pretty good copy," said Sally's companion and Atal blushed.

  "I suppose the trainers are fake too," Sally said. They were airPower, the ones with scarlet kangaroo-skin inserts down both sides.

  "This is Bozo," said Atal, ignoring the question. "He doesn't say much."

  Bozo smiled, a slow and lazy smile that revealed his teeth, which were mostly gold with a hole in one canine where a diamond had worked loose.

  "Sally," said Sally and turned towards the old man, realizing for the first time that he hadn't given his name.

  "Wu Yung III."

  "As in . . ." Atal stopped and did a double take, eyes widening. His next look at Sally was an attempt to work out their relationship.

  "We've just met," said Sally.

  Wu Yung smiled. "And you're all welcome," he said smoothly. "Please stay for as long as you like . . . This island is mine," he added when Atal stared blankly. "I take it none of you read Chinese or Malay?" Wu Yung nodded to a peeling sign nailed a nearby palm tree, half-buried behind a tumble of deep green.

  The three backpackers looked at each other.

  It seemed not.

  "You asleep?"

  "Not any longer . . ." Sally smiled to take the sting from her words and watched the elderly man duck his head under the low doorway and shut the door behind him. In one hand Wu Yung carried a bottle of white wine and in the other two glasses. A leather camera case hung from a strap about his neck, and stuck into the rolled waistband of his sarong nestled a smaller bottle, unlabelled.

  This was the point that modesty demanded Sally drag her bed's thin cotton cover up to cover her small breasts or at the very least cross her arms.

  She did neither.

  Instead she sat up straighter. Focusing her eyes in the darkness.

  "Like the hut?"

  Sally nodded. The shack was old, raised off the rough ground on wooden stilts and leaning slightly in one direction, its collapse stopped by a convenient casuarina tree. She had no doubt that the palm roof leaked and that wind entered at will in winter but none of that mattered. It was the most perfect building she'd ever seen. Simple, cheap to build and easily sustainable.

  "I came to ask you a question," said Wu Yung.

  Half-naked on an old canvas bed with her tits bare to his gaze, Sally was under the impression she'd already answered it. Everything in life had a price and she had no problems with paying.

  "Ask," Sally said.

  "Why are you here?" said Wu Yung. "I mean, what exactly are you looking for?"

  Sally blinked. "I'm not looking for anything."

  The elderly Chinese man smiled, his face lit by the moon through a glassless window. "If you're not searching," he said, "then why come?"

  More waves broke on the beach than Sally could number. Waves, breeze and the night chatter of a troop of wak-wak, the scream of long-tailed parakeet. A busy backdrop that did nothing to hide her own silence.

  "I don't believe in looking," she said finally. "I believe in finding. There's a difference."

  "Yes," Wu Yung said. "There is. So let'
s drink to that difference." He held up his bottle and Sally suddenly realized there was condensation running down its sides. "There's a fridge at the house," Wu Yung explained, seeing her look.

  "House?"

  Wu Yung grinned. "You think I sleep on the beach? I've got a freshwater pool, air-conditioning, satellite TV . . . I come here to escape the pressures of Hong Kong, not become a monk." He handed her the wine, waiting until Sally noticed it was already opened. "Why don't you pour?" he suggested.

  When the bottle was finally empty, Wu Yung sat back with a smile and let the minutes drift by in a symphony of insect rhythms and overlapping waves.

  "Hear it?"

  Sally nodded sleepily. Music was something else at which she wasn't very good. Her fingers never quite found the chords and her one attempt to write a song of her own had been total failure.

  "What do you hear?"

  "Waves," said Sally. "And insects," she added when he seemed to expect more.

  "Nothing else?"

  Sally shook her head.

  "Go to the window," Wu Yung suggested.

  Sally went. The sea breeze flowing over her bare skin.

  "What do you see?" Wu Yung asked her.

  "Stars," said Sally. "Points of light. How about you?"

  Wu Yung climbed to his feet and walked to the window. Stood so close behind her that Sally could feel his breath on the back of her neck. "I see distance," said Wu Yung. When he turned Sally round it was to ask her something else.

  "Are you worried by the thought of death?"

  "No more than anybody else," Sally said, wondering if his question was sinister. "I'm one of life's fighters," she added firmly. "I work on instinct. It takes a lot to frighten me."

  "I didn't ask if you were afraid of it." Wu Yung's voice was dry. "I asked if death worried you . . ."