"You ready?"
Sally adjusted her headscarf and nodded.
"Wait for the blades to stop," said Eugenie, "then follow me." Ducking under the doorway, she dropped to a crouch, eyes already scanning La Kasbah for the Zil that would drive them to meet Moncef Pasha.
"I'll be your interpreter," Eugenie added. "But for the actual marriage you have to make the responses yourself, in Arabic. They're very simple and I've written them out phonetically on a piece of card."
CHAPTER 30
Tuesday 1st March
"Quiet," hissed a black-haired boy sitting next to Hani. He stared down at his plate, on which a tiny bird sat in the centre of an elaborate matrix of sauce dribbled into the shape of recurring arabesques. So far he had yet to touch his meal.
"Why should I?" Hani demanded, still not bothering to lower her voice. She wanted to know why her Uncle Ashraf was not at Domus Aurea and no one seemed able to tell her. Hani found it hard to believe he hadn't already achieved what he set out to do. Whatever that was.
It also hadn't occurred to Hani that her uncle might miss Kashif's party.
Dressed in a silk kaftan with gold embroidery around the neck and wearing a Rolex several sizes too big, Murad Pasha glanced nervously across to where his half brother sat watching them. "My brother doesn't approve of noise."
"And I don't approve of the pasha," Hani announced rather too loudly. A grey-haired woman standing with two Soviet guards behind the Emir glanced across to smile. Hani got the feeling she didn't like Kashif either. "Anyway," Hani said, "if he prefers silence, why are they here?"
A jerk of her chin took in a white-robed group who stood slap-bang in the middle of the cruciform dining room, below an impossibly huge chandelier. Five of them were chanting while a sixth beat time on a goatskin drum.
"These are the Emir's choice," Murad Pasha said, as if that should be obvious. "Those are the artists selected by Kashif." He pointed behind him to a group of nasrani over by a far wall, all dressed in black suits and white shirts with black bow ties, like Kashif, in fact. One of them carried a Perspex violin, which he swung loosely by its neck.
"Great," said Hani. "I can't wait."
The boy seemed roughly her age but still half a head shorter, which made him rather small for eleven. He had narrow shoulders and girl's wrists and might have been good at running, except he looked far too sensible to run anywhere. Everybody else at the top table was talking, but the only time the boy opened his mouth was to answer one of Hani's questions. The rest of the time his eyes slid past her to watch Kashif, the Emir and Lady Maryam.
"Don't you want that?" Hani pointed at his quail.
Murad shook his head without bothering to look at her.
"Why not?"
Murad Pasha sighed. "I'm vegetarian," he said. "I don't approve of killing animals. And I'm only here under protest."
"So you don't mind if my cat has it?"
The area in which they sat had once been a biat bel kabu, the living quarters for a corsair and his family. Shaped like a fat, crudely drawn cross, with a long downstroke leading to a courtyard, now glassed over, and the shorter upstroke opening onto a smaller, still-uncovered courtyard where Chef Edvard had set up his kitchens, the cruciform room had sidebars that led nowhere.
In total there were six archways into the dining room. And in the centre, below the chandelier, three tables had been positioned, one high table at which sat Murad Pasha and Hani, Kashif, the Emir and Lady Maryam and two lesser tables, at right angles to the top table.
The Berber musicians occupied the open space between the three and because they always faced the Emir, everyone on the side tables saw the singers only in profile. Behind the Emir stood Eugenie de la Croix, flanked by two guards in jellabas, their striped robes in contrast to the drab uniform of a single major who stood behind Kashif Pasha.
Hani didn't recognize Eugenie or anyone else and was happily unaware that at least one of the men sitting at a side table had recognized her.
"So who's the girl?" Senator Malakoff demanded of his elderly neighbour, a Frenchman famous for knowing everything about everyone. His enemies, who were legion, would say this was because St. Cloud traded in souls. His friends, of whom there were fewer, limited themselves to describing the Marquis as the kind of man who never let go a favour or forgave a good deed.
"The al-Mansur brat."
"But I thought . . ." His American neighbour looked puzzled. "Aren't they all al-Mansur?"
"After a fashion," St. Cloud said heavily, helping himself to oysters flown in from Normandy. Without thought, he held up a glass and felt its weight change as a waiter hurriedly filled it with Krug. St. Cloud made a point of not noticing servants unless they were both young and beautiful, and then, man or woman, his charm hit them like prey caught in a hunting light. The sex of his conquests mattered little: as St. Cloud readily admitted, he was strictly equal opportunity.
"That's Lady Hana al-Mansur," he explained, returning to the question. "She recently came into a rather large sum of money. Courtesy of Hamzah, Quitrimala . . ." Having mentioned North Africa's richest man, St. Cloud watched understanding finally reach the American's face.
"Ahh, yes," said the Senator. "Her uncle is Governor of El Iskandryia. Wasn't he implicated in that dreadful . . ."
"Ex-Governor," St. Cloud said firmly. "He resigned." The way the Marquis said this suggested that Ashraf Bey's resignation had been anything but voluntary.
"Wasn't there also something last year about his niece being kidnapped?"
"Apparently," said the Marquis, draining his glass. "Something like that. And I have to admit to being rather surprised to see Lady Hana."Not to mention furious, St. Cloud thought to himself. Quite apart from the fact he was now unable to gossip loudly about Ashraf al-Mansur, and the Marquis had been counting on doing precisely that, St. Cloud had paid hard currency for a complete list of guests, then paid out again to swap his chair for one two down, less prestigious, obviously, but infinitely more useful.
Five thousand dollars had been the cost of getting to sit on Senator Malakoff's left rather than his right. US dollars well spent because Malakoff's right ear was perforated, a fact known only to its owner, his doctor and the Marquis de St. Cloud who'd made a point of acquiring his medical records. Apparently the Senator's partial deafness was the result of a recent diving accident in Baja, California. And since the Senator was forbidden to dive by his wife, who believed he'd been revisiting his misspent youth with a prostitute in Tijuana, well . . .
So now the Soviet first secretary was juggling the upside of finding himself in a better seat than expected with wondering exactly why America's latest roving fact finder consistently ignored every comment the ambassador made.
"I'm having a little party afterwards," St. Cloud said quietly. "Very select. I was wondering if you'd be interested?"
"A party?"
"Out at Cap Bon. At my house."
The building in question was actually a palace erected for an exiled prince of Savoy and St. Cloud's parties were anything but small. The Marquis was relying on the American to know that. "You, me, some friends, a few girls . . ."
He'd have mentioned boys but the Senator had voted against repealing legislation outlawing homosexuality and St. Cloud was not someone to come between a man and his prejudice. At least not when that someone was retained by some of the biggest oil shippers in the world.
"Mostly Japanese girls," St. Cloud admitted. "Although I have borrowed a rather lovely Mexican, a bit inexperienced but very beautiful." The girl in question, who was actually Spanish, had been told to keep that fact to herself.
"Mexican?"
St. Cloud nodded. "Lovely girl," he said, "you'll adore her."
After oysters and champagne, Kashif Pasha's nod to the two terms he'd spent studying at the Sorbonne, came wood pigeon stuffed with dates and wrapped in layers of fine filo pastry, so that each mouthful became an adventure in archaeology.
With the smoked pigeon came
a wine St. Cloud didn't recognize, tannat and auxerrios, almost prune-flavoured, made from grapes grown in an iron-rich subsoil beneath a sun slightly too hot for real subtlety. One of the Emir's own vineyards probably. Although, if this was the case, then St. Cloud wasn't sure why each bottle was carefully wrapped in a linen tablecloth to hide its label.
The very fact Emir Moncef served wine outraged half his visitors, while the fact he justified this by quoting Jalaluddin Rumi, rather than relying on timeworn arguments of modernization and rationality, worried the other half.
St. Cloud looked to where the old man sat silent at the top table, trapped between his son and the wife he hadn't seen for decades. This was, everybody understood, an important moment of reconciliation. Getting father, son and wife into the same room had taken high-level negotiation and no one quite understood why the Emir had finally agreed.
"God he looks miserable," Senator Malakoff said, noticing St. Cloud's gaze.
"Wouldn't you?" said St. Cloud. He glanced pointedly at Lady Maryam whose moon face was almost hidden beneath a silk hijab. There was no doubting that she was almost as wide as she was tall.
Senator Malakoff nodded. Yes, he could honestly say he'd be miserable if that was his wife. "How much more of this do we have to endure?" he asked the Frenchman.
"Hours," said the Marquis. "We've only just begun."
Which wasn't strictly true. As well as the guest list, St. Cloud had seen the menu and, provided one discounted the palate-cleaning offering of sorbet and the snails, goat's cheese and fresh figs which were to be served last, the number of courses was limited to five, since wild trout and rabbit were due to arrive simultaneously as were baklava and baked Alaska.
"Hours?" The Senator looked so sick that St. Cloud smiled. As well as partial deafness the man suffered from a notoriously weak bladder; a serious flaw in someone charged with establishing contact with the party of Kashif Pasha.
St. Cloud knew about that too . . .
Clicking his fingers for a waiter, the Marquis whispered something in the boy's ear, leaning rather closer than was necessary and watched the waiter scurry off, reappearing seconds later with an empty jeroboam of champagne.
"Piss in this," St. Cloud said, placing the bottle beside the Senator's chair. "That's what most of us do."
Pigeon was replaced by lamb roasted in charcoal, testicles still hanging from each gutted carcass like fat purses. Each table got two of the animals. Enough to enable every guest to reach forward and pinch fingers of hot meat without having to stretch. Unnoticed by most guests, the Sufi dancers gave way to a shaven-headed young man backed by a trio of nasrani jazz musicians dressed in black. Each note that ululated through the dining room had a haunting quality that filled St. Cloud with feelings of loss and regret. The Marquis hated it as a matter of principle.
"He's good," said Hani.
"Who is?" Murad Pasha spoke though a mouthful of roast peppers. He was fastidiously picking slivers of vegetable from the dish on which the lamb sat, his fingers getting so soiled and greasy that he'd abandoned his napkin and taken to using the edge of the tablecloth instead.
"The Sufi."
"Is he?"
Hani looked at her cousin, who shrugged.
"How would I know?" Murad demanded. And there was a sadness to his words at odds with the wry smile that lit his face. No boy should have eyelashes that long, Hani decided before considering his question.
Knowing such things came naturally to Hani and so she'd never stopped to wonder how she knew. Reading was part of the answer. She did a lot of that. And questions. Aunt Nafisa always told her she asked too many of those. But mostly she just made connections. Adding one fact to another to arrive at a third that was obvious in retrospect.
"Our porter," she said carefully, "he's a Sufi and this is his kind of music. Also my Uncle Ashraf . . ."
Murad Pasha raised dark eyebrows. He'd heard all about Lady Hana's uncle. "He's a Sufi too?"
"Possibly," said Hani with a shrug. "They like the same music. I was going to say that really he's . . ." She lowered her voice and the boy bent closer, head tilting so that Hani could whisper; but the truth about the sons of Lilith went unspoken as one of the guards behind the Emir suddenly yelled.
And grabbed for his automatic.
"Emir."
Time slowed and within its slowness Hani watched the Sufi raise a revolver, thumb back the hammer and let go, the trigger being already depressed. His first shot drilled the bodyguard through his still-open mouth. Blood and splinters of vertebrae exiting in a vivid splash from the back of Nicolai Dobrynin's neck.
"No . . ."
Murad's scream broke time's crawl and in the acceleration that followed Hani saw the grey woman try to throw herself across Moncef just as his other bodyguard decided to do the same. Flame flared again from the Sufi's muzzle, there was a crack of gunfire and, in the utter silence, Eugenie and the second Soviet guard tumbled together. As for the man with the gun, a shot from behind dropped the Sufi where he stood.
All this took maybe a second. Perhaps fractionally less.
Murad Pasha was still rising from his chair when Hani grabbed him and tipped hers back, their chairs hitting the floor with an impact that knocked what little was left of the boy's shout from his body.
"Stay down," said Hani.
Murad shook his head.
"You'll be killed."
"Look," Murad said, as he snatched free his wrist, "No one's shooting at you or me. It's my father they want to murder. Okay?" The boy's scramble to stand upright ended abruptly, when Hani grabbed one ankle and yanked hard.
She didn't mean to let go, but the moment Murad's other foot raked across her knuckles instinct cut in, and by the time she'd taken her hand from her mouth Murad was on his feet, looking for his father, who appeared to be missing.
Hani swore. Bad swearing. The kind Zara used when she thought no one was there. But Hani clambered to her own feet all the same, trying to stay low so bullets went over her head, if there were any more bullets.
Which was how she came to see a distant waiter, thin and white jacketed with a staff tag that read Hassan wrestle a Browning hiPower from a tuxedoed musician.
"Shoot him," barked the officer who'd stood behind Kashif Pasha. Hani wasn't sure which one he was talking about either. "Do it," Major Jalal insisted. When no one moved the major drew his own automatic. Only Major Jalal never got to pull the trigger because one second the waiter and musician were struggling and then they weren't.
For a moment the waiter just stood, watching the other man crumple and then he retreated towards the outside kitchens, Browning hiPower still in his hand and muzzle pointing firmly at Major Jalal's head.
A parting shot over the head of the crowd kept Kashif's guests from rushing after him. The metallic clunk that followed was the waiter ramming a spit between handles on the other side of the courtyard door.
"Shoot out the hinges," Kashif Pasha ordered.
"No," said an older voice. "Not before securing the room."
Hani knew without looking that she'd just heard the first words Emir Moncef had uttered all evening. It was a grey-haired, steel-eyed kind of voice. One that allowed for little compromise. Although that didn't stop Kashif Pasha from pushing Major Jalal towards the blocked door.
"Do it . . ."
"We said no." Moncef's words were firm. Far firmer than the steps that carried him back into the room. "That exit could be booby-trapped. Either wait for a bomb squad or send someone round to check from the other side." The Emir addressed his remarks to everybody but most guests understood, as did Kashif Pasha, that the rebuke was aimed at him alone.
"But . . ."
"Do what His Highness says." Flat as a line showing cardiac arrest, the voice came from behind Moncef. The woman to whom it belonged was neat, compact and had skin the colour of ripe aubergine. A single pip on her shoulder gave Fleur Gide's rank as lieutenant. The gun she carried was a Heckler & Koch, capable of 850 rounds a minute. Sh
e carried it low so it raked across everyone in sight, even her commander.
"I thought we agreed . . ." Kashif's voice was harsh.
"And we thought you promised to provide adequate security," said the Emir, his face hollow with grief. "Nicolai and Alex are dead. And our oldest companion." He stared down at the grey-haired woman killed with a .45, one that had drilled through her ribs and still held enough velocity to kill the guard who had been standing behind her. She lay in a cloak of blood on a white floor, eyes still open.
Leaning heavily on his cane, the Emir knelt to close the woman's eyes himself, muttering a prayer for the dead.
Kashif Pasha was shocked to realize his father was crying, in public and openly. Over two Soviet guards and a nasrani mercenary. In the circumstances the only thing he could do was ignore the fact. "Where's my mother gone?" he demanded.
"I took her to safety," said Lieutenant Gide. "As I did your father when the shooting started. Those were madame 's orders, should the need arise." Her gaze made it clear that the madame to whom she referred was the elderly woman dead on the floor. Kashif Pasha ignored her. "Arrest everyone in the kitchens," he told Major Jalal. "Before they run away."
"And just why would they do that?" the Emir asked.
"Because they're nasrani," Kashif Pasha said through gritted teeth. "Because one of them just shot an undercover member of military intelligence."
"Undercover? I thought we'd agreed. . ."
Kashif Pasha scowled at his father's mimicry and the Emir smiled. "Arrest them if you must," he said, "but release them afterwards." He held up one hand to stop his son from interrupting. "Understand me. None of them are to disappear."
CHAPTER 31
Wednesday 2nd March
Hani, three seats away from where Eugenie got shot, eyes locking on his, too frightened to be puzzled at not recognizing a face so familiar.
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