Effendi a-2

by Jon Courtenay Grimwood

  Now he was alone, with his back to the empty village. Well, it was two villages really. One built from grey brick that looked heavy but turned out to be solid froth, like ossified spit. That version had been constructed ten years before by the government and destroyed by them as well, a few years later.

  The older village was behind the new one, jammed into a space between the start of a hill and a scar of rock. But most of its mud-walled huts had fallen in, from age this time. According to the Colonel, there was no water for miles, what with the wadis drying up and the nearest bore hole being both barren and filled with corpses from an earlier battle.

  Ka lifted his H&K/cw and snapped free the lower clip. It was loaded with 5.56mm, each kinetic round dipped in holy water and polished with snakeskin. His old AK49 had been altogether better, less flashy. But an older boy had wanted Ka’s AK49 and given him the plastic gun in return. That boy was dead now. Ka didn’t feel too bad about it.

  CHAPTER 5

  7th July

  “You need to be here . . .”

  Avatar’s call came through as Hamzah was getting ready for bed. His wife was upstairs sleeping, and his daughter . . . Wherever Zara had gone after her swim, she’d taken her little F-type Jaguar and left a wet towel on the hall floor by way of good-bye.

  “Where’s here?”

  “Sarahz . . . Corner of Place Gumhuriya.”

  Hamzah knew exactly where the club was. There might be a dozen bars and restaurants he owned without knowing exactly where they were, but Sarahz had been one of his early acquisitions, maybe the first.

  “I’m about to turn in.”

  “Not now, you’re not . . . Believe me, I’ve got something you’ll want to see.”

  Avatar put down the club’s pay phone and went back to his decks. Building on a breakbeat sambassimba anthem that cut the heavy overdub/techno fusion that was ol’sko drum’n’bass with lighter Sao Paolo rhythms, weirdshit polka, vicious Fender licks and syncopated snare.

  “SpecialBeatService,” the near original PatifePorto mix.

  He was working a late-Wednesday crowd, upstairs at Sarahz. Mostly poor little rich boys from St. Mark’s plus a handful of overdressed, hard-eyed kazuals from Moharrem Bey. The girls were tourists, mostly. A smattering of au pairs, exchange students, teenagers glad to get away from their distant families.

  Avatar got the gig on merit. The manager didn’t know his new DJ was the bastard of Hamzah Effendi. Until ten minutes ago, Amici hadn’t known that his club was owned by Avatar’s father—and he was still getting over that shock.

  Hamzah sighed and pushed himself up off his bateau lit. The mahogany bed had been imported eighty years earlier from Marseilles, found the previous year in a souk in El Gomruk and repaired for Hamzah by a sullen carpenter from Mali who spat, chain-smoked and forgot to wash but had the hands of an angel and the eye of an Italian polymath.

  Hamzah forgave the carpenter his bad habits because he actually made things by hand, instead of using machines. Madame Rahina hated the bateau lit but that was fine. As Hamzah frequently pointed out, nothing required her to sleep in it.

  Habit had made such things easy for them; and Hamzah’s practice of working late justified his need for a bed in the room off his study.

  Within the standards set by culture and religion, he was a good husband and he tried to be a good father. He’d never once raised his hand to his daughter and had only occasionally slapped his wife, and that not recently.

  It would never occur to him to hit his mistress, but then Olga used to assassinate Americans for a living, in the days before she came to work as his PA. Olga was Organizatsiaya and also a Soviet spy, but she knew that Hamzah knew, and they both understood that Commissar Zukov at the Soviet Consulate now required little more than a daily report on Hamzah’s movements.

  Tomorrow she’d report that, after a good breakfast, he voluntarily presented himself at Champollion Precinct, the Police HQ in Rue Riyad Pasha, to be questioned about the murder of Lady Nafisa, aunt of Ashraf Bey. She’d mention that he’d taken his lawyer and been released without charge . . . Because Hamzah would be released, that was why he kept tame lawyers.

  Quite apart from the fact that, for once, he was totally innocent.

  Hamzah hit a button beside his bed and waited.

  “Boss?”

  “I’m going out.”

  “Very good. I’ll get the car.”

  It was obvious which vehicle Alex would select. Hamzah’s Rolls-Royce Silver Ghost. Like Olga, Alex was Soviet and so, bizarrely, was the Rolls. At least its modifications were . . .

  “If you’re ready, Boss.” The big man slammed shut the rear door and Hamzah felt, rather than heard, the solidness of bombproof steel and a thud as heavy locks slid into place. The car was originally built for Lenin, one of six that the revolutionary leader ordered from London when the fledgling Menshevik Alliance was at its lowest ebb.

  With Cossacks advancing from the Crimea and Siberia already lost to Admiral Kolchak, Vladimir Illych had ordered his secretary’s secretary to write to Charles Rolls ordering six models of his latest car, the cars to be paid for in advance, in gold. Three weeks later, the British PM reluctantly agreed to the dismemberment of the old Tsarist empire . . . Prussia, France and America followed.

  Hamzah had purchased the vehicle at Commissar Zukov’s suggestion during one of the CCCP’s habitual bouts of bankruptcy. And had spent the first six months having various illegal listening devices taken out. Alex had come with the vehicle.

  “We got trouble, Boss?”

  Good question. And if he did have trouble, was it the kind that mattered? Hamzah hired people to keep trouble at arm’s length but Avatar wasn’t one of them. The boy was grief of a different kind.

  “Let’s find out,” said Hamzah and leant back against black leather, remembering the boy’s mother, a dark-skinned slip of a girl who spoke three languages and didn’t know her own age. Hamzah did, knew it to the very month, but never admitted it, except occasionally to himself.

  Rammed was how tourists described Sarahz. Rammed to the rafters, to the gills, rammed tight. The same thing happened every Wednesday, the El Anfushi clubs closed up and hard-core clubbers headed south looking for the real thing. Sarahz gave it to them. Neo retro, classic house, random darkwave . . . even trance, so epiphanic it came with a built-in halo. Chemical sainthood.

  And DJ Avatar bestowed the radiance, from battered Matsui decks that had been rebuilt so many times that the only original component left was a cheap plastic logo glue-gunned to the front. Av learnt fast. His first real sound system comprised a triple deck, reconditioned 303 and original theramin. The lot got ripped off his second week playing clubs, at some cellar behind Maritime Station.

  Now he had a deck that looked shit and sounded like it was wired direct to God. And when he wasn’t riding his Wild Star, Avatar drove an old VW camper with one side caved in from front arch to rear fender. Prayer beads hung from the front mirror and the back window was stickered with quotations from the Holy Quran. No one looked twice. Certainly no one looked and thought, “Ah, there goes enough rare vinyl to open a shop.”

  Which was the point, obviously.

  Sarahz had an all-night licence. The result of astute blackmail, a little bribery and the impossibly convenient fact that it was directly opposite Misr Station, with a huge taxi rank to one side and Place Gumhuriya to the front. Since the nearest apartment block was a hundred metres away and inhabited by people who really didn’t matter, there were no complaints. At least none that made it onto the record books.

  “D’bozzizzere . . .”

  Which Avatar quickly translated as, “The Boss is here . . .”

  Nodding, Avatar killed the lights in his booth and slid a disc into one slot and a slab of samples into another and put the deck on auto. He didn’t figure on being gone longer than it took to build up and break down and, to be honest, most of the floor were so caned it was doubtful they’d even notice.

  “Ou
t of here,” he told his throat mike and heard an acknowledgment through his earbead. If whatever looked like taking longer than it should, Smugs would work the crowd. Smugs was a house regular, ten years older than Avatar, with half the following. Av tolerated the other guy’s lack of skill and in return Smugs didn’t object to Avatar claiming the decks when fancy took him.

  “On the roof,” said the manager as Av unlocked the booth’s rear wall and stepped into a darkened corridor. All shaved skull, pearl stud and shiny black suit, Carlo Amici stood back politely and Avatar sighed. This afternoon the man had regarded Av as a lower form of life, some kid who got overpaid for pushing buttons and spouting crap. Now, suddenly, he’d discovered that Av had a direct line to Hamzah.

  There went another good gig.

  “I’ll find my own way up,” said Avatar, heading for a steel door.

  “You could use the lift . . .”

  “No, this is quicker.” Cooler too, more in keeping, though Avatar didn’t mention that.

  The fire escape brought Avatar out on a flat roof that overlooked a darkened square. Over on the far corner of the roof, a small man was lashed to a radio aerial. The aerial was illegal but, equally obviously, no goons from RadioAuthority came by with angle grinders and chopped $15,000 of pirate transmitter into metal spaghetti as happened in other clubs. Next to the naked journalist stood Hamzah Effendi, elegant in Homburg and camel-hair coat.

  “Old man.” Avatar stepped out of the darkness.

  Hamzah smiled and held out a hand. The big man’s grip was firm but controlled. What he offered was a greeting, not a test of strength.

  Avatar was being publicly acknowledged in front of Alex, Carlo Amici and a couple of the doormen. Without wanting to be ungrateful, he did wonder why . . .

  “Okay,” said Hamzah, “I’m here. Who’s this . . . ?”

  “Remember the shitweasel I was talking about . . .” The boy nodded towards the naked man. “His name’s Mike Estelle. He came in earlier, still asking questions. So I figured it might be a good idea if you two actually met. You know, socially . . .”

  “You did this to him?”

  “Did what?” Avatar looked at the quivering Englishman who was lashed to the mast by his testicles. There wasn’t a bruise on the man. And the only blood came from where the little shit had chewed out the inside of his own mouth.

  “I barely touched him . . .”

  Hamzah smiled. “You,” he said to the man. “Here I am. You want to tell me what this is about?”

  A sniffling silence was Hamzah’s only answer. Sniffling silence and frightened eyes that stared back, wide and defenceless. Well, Hamzah had news for the Englishman. Defencelessness didn’t impress him and it certainly didn’t punch any buttons.

  “No questions?” Hamzah sighed. “Your choice . . . Throw him off the roof,” Hamzah ordered in English, turning away.

  The rising thud of a bass loop from the floor below mixed neatly with Mike Estelle’s rising scream. And apart from Alex, only Avatar saw the tiny, sideways chop of Hamzah’s hand, which negated the order.

  “You hear me?” Hamzah demanded crossly. “Do it now.”

  “Sure, Boss. Sorry, Boss.” Alex produced an evil-looking pair of pliers from his pocket. “Let me just snip this wire.”

  Between them, Avatar and Alex freed the struggling journalist and dragged him to the edge of the roof. The fall was barely twenty feet but the ground below was concrete.

  “He should be dressed,” Avatar said suddenly. “Less suspicious.”

  “No,” said Alex, voice casual. “Foreign tourist gets blasted, weirds out and jumps from club roof. Check out the local newsfeed. Happens all the time . . .

  “Yeah, really,” he added, seeing Avatar’s doubtful look. “Besides, no problem, the Boss will tell the police what to decide . . .” Alex began running the sobbing man backward and forward, like an athlete limbering up for some Olympic event. “Okay,” he said to Avatar. “You ready?”

  That was when the nasrani shat himself.

  Hamzah sighed. “Okay,” he said heavily. “Let’s try it a different way.” He took a fresh Partegas from his pocket and paused as both doormen bounced forward with lighters. Waving them away, Hamzah bit off one end and spat it over the edge. Only then did he nod to the one nearest.

  “Last chance,” Hamzah told the journalist. “My name is Hamzah Effendi. I own the company that owns this club. I also own an oil field, the Midas processing plant and a shipping line. All this you can get from any trade directory . . . So tell me, who sent you and what do they really want to know?”

  CHAPTER 6

  Sudan

  Sergeant Ka turned towards the truth and raised a fist above his head in formal salute:

  I will ascend to heaven

  I will raise my throne above the stars

  I will sit on the mount of assembly . . .

  Before the silver talisman he wore around his neck became an amulet, it was briefly a bride piece in a dusty city with empty streets and a broken-down bazaar. South of the city lived the Dinka, cattle people, who once roamed the cracked earth between here and the upland forest, where fever trees glow and scrub lies lifeless, until rains come and the underbrush explodes.

  Originally, the talisman was recognizable as a Maria Theresa dollar, but the touch of a thousand hands had worn it flat. The coin, however, was never Austrian. It was minted in Stambul, a hundred years after the empress died, at a time when silver dollars were a common currency in the Sahara, Arabia and the Sudan.

  Having been taken south as payment for slaves, the coin become a bride price before coming north again, around the neck of a child who stabbed the grandson of the Dinka who originally received it in marriage.

  She used a blade because that day’s bullet ration was gone . . . Later, she swapped the talisman for a bone crucifix taken from a nun; but that was months later, long after the little war started in Abu Simbel. Mostly Ka avoided thinking about the little war and how he became a soldier.

  And sometimes he forgot.

  Before Ka was a soldier, he was a camel boy, which was an easy job and one he liked. Foreigners came by gleaming barge to the great temple and he and boys like him led them by camel up the thorny slope from the river’s edge to the foot of the cliffs, where great carvings had stood undisturbed for well over three thousand years.

  Back then, Ka wore tattered shorts and no top or shoes, because that way the tips were better. Once he’d worn a Pepsi T-shirt and a pair of Nikes that a pink-skinned girl had left behind and hardly any of the foreigners chose him. They rode with the barefooted boys.

  He’d have learnt his lesson from this, even without the beating he got from his uncle. Next day, Ka went back to no shirt or shoes. He also began to listen to the guides when they were too busy to notice.

  Soon he knew all the best stories about the great king and his wife. He could explain why the four big statues all wore the double crown of Upper and Lower Egypt, while inside the cliffs, in the darkness of the inner chamber, the king wore only the white crown of Upper Egypt or the red crown of Lower Egypt, depending on whether he was in the northern or southern part of the temple.

  And he learnt what interested the foreigners, those people who wasted water as if it was endless. Who washed under flowing showers, shat in unused water and giggled as they tipped full bottles over their heads and let clean water drain away into the dust.

  He told them of kings marrying their daughters, brothers sleeping with sisters, mothers with sons. It kept the magic sacred, kept the river flowing and renewed the dark silt that lined the banks and fed the kingdom, but he didn’t explain that. The reasons were never as important to the nasrani as the actions themselves.

  When Ka told of battles where the king’s army collected testicles to help his scribes count the number of captured, the men would look sick and the bareheaded women either quizzical or appalled. And Ka would smile and look happy when they tipped him, pretending to be surprised. As if he’d spend his
whole morning telling them tales just because he loved foreigners.

  No one loved the foreigners, not really. Except, maybe, the government because they brought in francs, marks and American dollars. The poor, the felaheen, would rather the foreigners didn’t wander unasked into mosques, still wearing their shoes, that they didn’t choke the desert roads with coaches that threw dust into the faces of those walking and, most of all, that they didn’t need endless hotels along the river, because now the areas richest in silt were closed to those who used to sharecrop them and landlords got their money from the tourists instead.

  In one month, at the start of the little war, the army beat to death forty-eight people because they came from a distant village where the headman’s son had gunned down five foreign tourists. Forty-eight for five. That was the exchange rate.

  The son, Samir, whose name meant one whose conversation in the evening is lively, but who was never heard to say more than two words together, lived away from his father’s village in a brick house on a rocky islet somewhere unimportant between Aswan and Wadi el-Sebua. He was a strange man, educated first at a local school and then at el-Azhar College in Al Qahirah. He left el-Azhar to work for the Société de Géographie d’Egypte, only to leave that in turn a few months later.

  After his reappearance near the village, Samir adopted a family of ungainly chicken-sized birds. There was nothing very special about the birds other than the fact that they lived in a reed bed and were entirely purple, except for their stiltlike legs, which were pink. They weren’t even rare.

  Before he died under torture, Samir was questioned by a major from the Al Qahirah military police. The local police were happy to do the job themselves but had been ordered to leave the job to an expert. One reason, some suggested, for their lack of action after the dead Samir’s cousins ambushed the major’s car, shot dead his eighteen-year-old driver and cut off the major’s hands, then beat him to death.