Winning was left to a twenty-eight-year-old sapper, a half-Egyptian, half-German who had reached regimental rank solely because every other officer had resigned, deserted or was already dead.
This was a man whose first action on arriving at his new HQ in a farmhouse overlooking the desert road was to send for a flame-thrower, have the pressure tank converted to take emulsion and order that the walls, floor and ceiling be sprayed white. While teenage officers advised by elder NCOs set up gun encampments and mortar pits, Major Koenig oversaw first the removal of all furniture from the downstairs of the farmhouse, then the removal of its two cheap overhead striplights and the light switches. Only then was the converted flame-thrower used to redecorate the rooms to suit the major’s taste.
Back in went a table and chairs, the overhead strips and a potbellied charcoal stove that the major took everywhere, for when he wanted fresh bread or coffee.
People might mutter but not when he was within earshot. And besides, the major knew exactly what he was doing as he stood in the middle of the redecorated room and told his officers not to bother setting up charts.
They were outnumbered and outgunned. All they had on their side was their command of a hilltop. That and strategy. And in the end Major Saeed Koenig Bey won by retreating. Though first he shot his favourite brother through the head for refusing to follow an order.
Amil was young, handsome and the undisputed favourite of both his parents in the way that only youngest sons can be. Bizarrely, despite their difference in age, Major Koenig adored him.
With the Ragged Army marching uphill, into the fire of the major’s machine guns and with every death being recorded by CNN drones hung high enough overhead to be out of rifle shot, Major Koenig ordered a retreat.
“Why?” Amil’s question had been simple.
Because we’re being filmed. Because we’re turning ourselves into murderers. Because I won’t order the deaths of a thousand twelve-year-olds who think that dirty feathers and dry twigs in a totem bag can stop bullets and that paradise waits with open gates for those who die, and see nothing contradictory in those two beliefs.
All of these would have been honest answers. But his senior sergeant and the other NCOs were watching the major, their uncertainty as to the wisdom of his order curdling to doubt. And orders were orders, that was what he’d been taught. The rules of engagement demanded it.
“Because I say so . . .”
“But we command the hill.”
“Not any longer.”
Amil opened his mouth to protest and bit back the words as his brother pulled a Luger from his belt.
“We retreat now. Understand?” Major Koenig glanced round his command group, which comprised a couple of hardened NCOs and a dozen subalterns so young they hadn’t yet had time to grow a first moustache. The Ragged Army advancing up the hill was forgotten momentarily. The crack of return fire from his own men outside the farmhouse gone from the major’s mind.
“We pull back to the crossroads and stop.”
“Sir,” his senior sergeant had raised a hand.
“You have a problem, Sergeant?” Words sharper than flint and cold as ice. Disdain, derision, mounting disbelief that any NCO might dare question an order. All of those and more were in the five words.
The senior NCO swallowed a smile. He was old enough to know the voice of his old commander, the major’s father, a ruthless bastard but a highly efficient one. As commanding officers went he was good, but the sergeant wouldn’t have wanted the man for his father.
“No, sir. Absolutely not, sir.” He snapped out a salute like the rawest, most frightened recruit and swung on his heels, the other NCOs straightening up, reassured now the decision had been made.
And there matters would have ended if Amil hadn’t insisted on taking a step forward to object. The rest had gone down in legend. Muttered by the General’s enemies as proof of his ruthlessness and spoken openly by his friends as proof of the same. Amil died with a mocking smile on his face and a bullet between the eyes from his brother’s gun.
Major Koenig left the body where it dropped.
By the time the major returned to the farmhouse that evening, walking under a white flag of truce, Amil’s body had been carried away and dumped with others in a pit dug into the terraces by a thin girl on a tractor. He came alone, unarmed, and stood silent and uncomplaining as rough hands searched him before letting him inside.
The ground floor of the farmhouse was crowded with the cream of the Ragged Army’s generals, their own uniforms anything but that. Some of the junior officers wore battledress stripped from UN observers but most had uniforms cut and sewn by local tailors along the way.
A few were imported, bought via middlemen from military tailors in Algiers, Berlin or Stambul. Two officers were even dressed in the uniform of Major Koenig’s regiment. One had, until that afternoon, been his aide de camp and the other the major had thought dead. Certainly the man had never returned from the morning’s reconnaissance.
Amused eyes watched him notice them.
A charcoal fire burned in the potbellied stove he’d been forced to abandon, heating a brass jug of fresh coffee. A hurricane lamp lit the room against advancing night.
Against centuries of tradition, Major Koeing was not offered a small cup of sweetened coffee or a brass sheesha filled with apple tobacco. He sat unasked on the only chair not in use and when he requested a glass of water to wet his throat this was refused. The major was pleased. It made what came next easier.
He was there to negotiate the surrender of El Iskandryia to the Ragged Army. General Mahdi had not bothered to come in person. Rumour said the jihad leader was too busy imposing his rule on Al Qahirah, where cinema doors had been bolted tight, bars burned and women whipped in public for going out with their heads uncovered. Schools for girls had been closed, female doctors banned from working, and aid workers of both sexes given twenty-four hours to leave the country.
Berlin, Paris and Washington were too busy being outraged to have time for what was about to happen on a hill to the south of Iskandryia.
Camped on terraces that had been cut into the slope before Islam or Christianity even existed, the Ragged Army crouched round fires lit with dried dung or branches ripped from the ancient olive grove. Food had been plentiful in Al Qahirah and most were no longer hungry. But they lit fires and killed any goats they could scavenge because that was what they did. Habit can take only weeks to become tradition and they’d had years. First in the Sudan, then moving north.
“Tomorrow and the next day we march,” their leader told Major Koenig. “The evening after that we arrive at El Iskandryia. Friday we pray. Saturday you bring out the old man to make his surrender.”
Fat chance, thought the major. The Khedive was too ill to leave his bed. Besides, he was Khedive, the old man would die rather than surrender his city. “And the terms?” Major Koenig asked.
There were no terms. The city surrendered. That was all there was to it. Those whom the Ragged Army let live were those who would live. No promises would be made.
Same terms they gave Al Qahirah.
“I agree.” Major Koenig held out his hand and when this was not taken, bowed slightly and clicked his heels, Berlin style, purely for the pleasure of seeing hatred flood the faces of his enemy. “The city will be ready for you,” he added.
Snapping a drill-perfect salute, he walked to the door, stopping only to reach into the emptiness where a light switch should be and touch together two wires.
The resulting blast broke the major’s right ulna in two places and dislocated his shoulder. Though what really hurt was the length of light fitting that scraped its way across his hipbone, fracturing his pelvis.
The bomb in the empty striplight was technologically primitive. All the same, it worked better than the major had been expecting. And while the West had at its disposal numerous kinds of self-firing plastique, not to mention those little synthetic viruses they were so busy denying, he’d had t
o rely on a block of Semtex, a basic detonator, ball bearings, batteries from a mobile and some recycled flex. All of it, excluding the ball bearings obviously, well past its use-by date.
The light fitting killed everyone standing under it; just not all at the same time. The luckiest deaths were immediate. Necks snapped or skulls broken open, hearts pierced by shattered ribs. Under heavy fire from his own side, who’d advanced as ordered at the sound of the explosion, the major got trucked to a camp in Al Qahirah, a shard of light fitting still embedded in his hip, his broken arm locked tight in a battle dressing. The fellah from the Ragged Army who’d pulled Major Koenig from the rubble thought the officer was one of her own.
“And General Mahdi. If I remember . . .” The Senator paused, wondering how she should put it delicately. “Had his hands cut off . . .”
“Among other things.”
That was three weeks later, in Al Qahirah. By then the Ragged Army had mostly surrendered, its mercenary core either dead, under arrest or rapidly selling each other out in return for immunity. Major Koenig was right. Taking out the enemy’s generals had been the solution.
And Senator Liz had finally remembered enough of the General’s history to wish she was somewhere else. What type of man took visiting dignitaries to see where he’d shot his own brother? The answer was obvious. Someone like Koenig Pasha.
“They never did find who murdered General Mahdi, did they?”
“No,” said the General, his eyes holding those of the American woman, “you’re right. They never did . . .”
“And Colonel Abad?” She named Mahdi’s infamous adviser, Washington’s bête noire.
“In paradise, no doubt,” said Koenig Pasha. “Or maybe hell.”
CHAPTER 23
14th October
“Hey.” Hani sounded so cross that Ifritah’s ears flicked back and Hani had to stroke the cat to get her purring again. “I was watching that . . .”
“Sorry,” said Raf, clicking his fingers to change channels. “I need to see what other people are saying about what’s happening . . .”
“Happening where?”
“Here.”
Hani raised her eyebrows but stayed put as Raf banged down his briefcase and turned his attention back to the screen. Heute in Berlin had nothing and neither did the US feeds, but that wasn’t surprising; both countries were notoriously insular. And Iskandryia’s own Ferdie Abdullah was concentrating on a second arson attack on a nightclub opposite Misr Station.
Raf found what he wanted on Paris—la Ronde, which segued straight from a snippet on the Prince Imperial’s first term at St. Andrews to a moderately gloating roundup of problems to be raised when representatives of the Kaiser and the Sublime Porte finally held separate meetings with a US arbitrator, to discuss renewing the Osmanli Accord, the treaty that defined spheres of economic influence in North Africa, the Middle East and the Balkans.
Berlin wanted the spheres expanded, as did Moscow. Paris was reserving its position. US Senator Elizabeth Elsing was on record as saying she thought spheres of influence were undemocratic. The French anchorman smirked when he reported this.
“Boring,” announced Hani, so Raf told the screen to find another cartoon and soon a bug-eyed, yellow whatsit was bumbling round being kind to small animals. And while the whatsit ran rescue missions or fried scary monsters with its awesome magic power, Raf boned a leg of lamb, cubed the meat and braised it in a heavy pan.
“What are you making?” Hani asked in the ad break.
“ Hunkar begendi, kind of . . .”
“Sultan’s delight.” Having just discovered McDonald’s, Hani’s tastes had telescoped. Anything that failed to come between two bits of bun with reconstituted french fries didn’t count.
For the sauce that gave its name to the dish, Raf needed to puncture tiny holes in four aubergines so they wouldn’t burst when he grilled them in Donna’s gas oven until their skins went black and blistered.
“You want to do this?” Raf picked up a fork and nodded to the uncooked aubergine.
Hani shook her head. So Raf punched holes in the purple skin instead.
“What is happening?” Hani asked. She was back with Ferdie Abdullah, who was running through the main headlines. Behind him a minor oil pipe bled crude onto gravel and hot sand while a huge billboard readingMIDAS REFINERY blazed like an advertisement for chaos. Before setting it on fire, the arsonists had taken time to stencil a row of red fists along the bottom of the sign.
Against a background of flames, impossibly young soldiers loaded two trespassing Ishies into a police van. With their faces hidden by goggles and belts studded with drives and umbrella modems, the freelance newshounds stumbled towards confinement like vintage astronauts traversing some monochrome lunar plain.
The masks were all affectation. A decent digital lens could be mounted onto the side of ordinary glasses and still be so small as to be almost invisible. As for the drives, anything bigger than a packet of Cleopatra was either outdated, third-world cheap or intentionally obvious.
On-screen, Ferdie Abdullah was explaining that, according to Iskandryia’s bright new Chief of Detectives, the apparently random, wide-ranging attacks of the previous week were connected after all, having been carried out by the Sword of God. Which was the first Raf had heard of it.
“I never said that . . .”
“What?”
“I never said the attacks weren’t random.”
“No?” Hani looked up from stroking Ifritah. “What does random mean?”
“Not related.”
Scooping the grilled aubergines out of their skins with a fork, Raf put the pulp to one side while he got butter from the fridge. Then all he needed was to add flour to the molten butter and beat hard as milk went into the mixture.
“So they are related?”
Raf stopped looking for a skillet. “I don’t know,” he said.
Hani sighed.
After he’d added mashed aubergine to his roux, Raf ground in a twist of pepper, a twist of sea salt and sprinkled on a handful of grated cheese. The lamb went onto the middle of an already warmed serving plate, with the aubergine sauce swirled in an elegant circle round the outside.
“You hungry?”
Hani shook her head.
“No, me neither.” Raf passed the serving dish to Hani. “See if Khartoum wants this, then I’ll buy you a burger . . .”
“For you,” Hani announced from the doorway of the porter’s quarters at the rear of the madersa’s covered garden.
“For us?” Khartoum glanced up from his game of Go as did his opponent, the owner of a small stall in Rue Cif, which ran along the back of the madersa. “You made this?” Khartoum looked surprised. Also disbelieving.
“No, Uncle Ashraf made it.”
“His Excellency . . .” the stall holder looked surprised. “The bey cooks?”
Hani smiled at the man whose knee-length coat and white cap announced he’d made the ritual pilgrimage to Mecca. “His Excellency does a lot of strange things,” she said shortly and backed out of the room. If either man thought it strange that the child had a flea-bitten cat slung round her neck like a collar, they didn’t mention it.
“You’ll be fine,” promised Raf when Hani hesitated in the madersa’s ornate marble hall. For reasons neither Khartoum nor Donna could properly explain, her late Aunt Nafisa had felt it necessary to keep the child indoors. Which meant the funeral of her aunt was the first time Hani had ever left the house.
“Of course I will,” Hani said and yanked open the front door. She smiled as she took Raf’s hand, though her nails dug hard into his palm as they stepped from the quiet of the madersa into the noise of Rue Sherif.
Raf dug back and Hani’s grin turned vulpine. When they reached the corner she was still grinning and still trying to dig her nails through his skin. They both knew she was only half-joking . . .
That night, the fox came as clouds blocked off the stars and the sky moved closer to the earth, imposi
ng an obvious but impressive boundary, like that loss of focus at the edge of a dream or the distant strangeness of the world beyond an aquarium as seen by some captive angelfish.
And as all this occurred, outside of the world outside the al-Mansur madersa, Raf sat on the edge of Hani’s narrow bed and watched the small child sleep, badly . . . She mewled half words and broken sentences that matched the fluttering behind her closed eyes. Panic glued strips of damp hair to her forehead and every so often she’d roll her shoulders as if fighting her way through a crowd. Raf watched and waited in what should have been darkness and would have been were he anyone else. At no point did he allow himself or the fox to sleep.
CHAPTER 24
Sudan
It was Sarah who taught Ka how to catch the birds that flocked south. While the ghosts of the others hunted lizards through the ruins of J’habite, she sat in the shade of the truck, sharing her pipe with Ka and refusing to talk.
Smoking always made Ka talkative. Sarah was the opposite. This was a month after Zac died and Ka was still afraid of Sarah’s long silences and the sudden thunder bursts of her anger.
As she stared blankly at the blue sky, Ka risked an occasional sideways glance at where the top button of her shirt had come undone. Not her collar button, which was missing, the one below that.
Through the slight gap he could see the start of a breast, shadow against shadow. And on the wrist of the hand holding her steel pipe, fine hairs lit in the light that dappled through the thermoflage covering their truck. His own skin had gone dark in the desert, yet hers was darker still. Almost purple, like al-badingan, a plant carried from Africa to al-Andalus by the army of Islam, though Ka didn’t know that. He just knew his uncle had grown them one year. Soft fruit that spoiled easily and was eaten as a vegetable fried with mutton oil and salt.
The pipe was Sarah’s own. Bent and scratched, it had been filthy when she took it off a dead nasrani photographer. Which meant Sarah had wasted hours meticulously scraping tar from the mouthpiece with a thorn stripped of its bark.
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