“You can stop this,” said Raf, pulling off Gregori’s hood, “anytime you want to . . .
“Okay, your choice.”
Raf muttered into his watch and the next scream was longer, shuddering to a close in a muffled plea, spoken in no language understood by either of them, in all probability, no language that was human.
“She won’t die,” said Raf, “just wish she could.”
He pulled a sheet of paper from his borrowed jacket and skimmed it. At the top, a blue-and-yellow globe nestled within two curving sheaves of corn. Between the tips of the corn hung a red star. And beneath the globe rose a yellow sun, rising from the base of the two sheaves, which was bound round with red ribbon.
“Commissar Zukov states categorically that you were not involved in work for the Soviet Union, but you knew that didn’t you . . .” Raf shrugged and skimmed the sheet. “The Soviet Union disowns your actions.”
Gregori looked at him.
“You want to talk to me about that?”
The man didn’t.
With a sigh, Raf muttered more words and the howls began again, animal-like and anguished, each one running into another until the very magnitude of the pain became unimaginable.
“Your choice,” Raf repeated. “Your choice . . .”
Gregori held out for another ten minutes, during which he chewed the edge of his lip to ribbons. And then he caved, eyes blind with tears as he pushed himself to his feet and lurched towards where Raf sat on a dusty wooden chair.
“Whatever you need,” Gregori said desperately. “Just stop your doctor.”
“Enough,” said Raf into his watch. The screams stopped dead. “You want to go see her?”
Gregori shook his head. “Later,” he said. “When the shock goes. She won’t be able to talk properly until then.” He looked, at that moment, as if he spoke from experience. “What do you want to know?”
“Everything,” said Raf, except that he already did. The man and girl were there to confirm something. All the same, Raf let Gregori describe how Spetsnaz were hired out to the highest bidder for any currency harder than roubles. There were rules to guarantee no military action was counterrevolutionary but, in practice, any job could be made to fit.
Gregori’s bitterness was unmistakable.
“You recognize her?” Raf pulled a photograph from his jacket. It showed the suit he’d left on the floor of the deserted house in Moharrem Bey. The technicians had done a good job with lighting, makeup and postproduction. The woman looked only slightly dead.
“Yes . . . She died.”
“I know,” Raf said. “I killed her . . . Thiergarten, right?”
Gregori nodded.
“Who both hired you and had tourists butchered to order . . . No,” Raf held up his hand when Gregori opened his mouth, “that wasn’t a question.”
The Soviet shrugged.
“So,” said Raf, “who involved the Thiergarten? That was a question,” he added.
“I don’t know.”
Raf had already figured this out for himself.
“What happens now?” the Spetsnaz asked. “To me and Nadia.”
“Your cousin?”
“My niece. My brother’s child.”
“Sanctuary,” said Raf. “Asylum. New identities if that’s what it takes. Help us and we will help her.”
Gregori smiled grimly. “It takes time to recover from something like that.” He jerked his head towards the silent wall. “And sometimes people never do, but you already know this, don’t you?”
“Maybe,” said Raf, “it will take much less time than you think. Now . . .” He pulled a final photograph from his jacket. “Tell me if you’ve ever seen this man.”
Eduardo looked at Raf’s outstretched hand, clicked the relevant bit of his brain into gear and shook it. And kept shaking until Raf patiently prised free his own fingers.
“Excellency.” Eduardo’s smile was shaky. His eyes still tearful. All he’d had to do was click on a voice recorder when Raf said turn it on and click it off when Raf said do that; but the ancient recording of a Moslem girl being tortured kept repeating in his head.
“One of the best,” Raf said to Hakim, as Eduardo turned away. “One of the best.”
Hakim looked doubtful.
“I mean it,” said Raf, and watched Eduardo shuffle away from Café Athinos, dodging traffic until he finally reached his ancient Vespa, which was parked up next to the Corniche wall. It took Eduardo five goes to kick-start the machine.
The man cost Champollion less than the precinct paid out each week for fresh coffee and still counted himself lucky.
“Guard the hospital,” said Raf to the two men remaining, well aware that Hakim and Ahmed were really meant to guard him. By giving them other duties he freed himself up; they both knew that and were powerless to do anything about it. And besides, governors of Iskandryia were supposed to be impossible to work for, it went with the job description. “Find the prisoners proper clothes,” he added as an afterthought, “and get a doctor in to see to the girl’s back.”
Raf caught the look in Hakim’s eye. No matter what had really happened, an enhanced version would be round the precinct within minutes. His officers could be relied on to guarantee that his reputation lived up to its reputation.
“She’ll live,” said Raf as he slipped on his shades and collected his own jacket from the back of Ahmed’s café chair.
There were at least fifteen other cars on the road, now that the curfew had been lifted. They were old, battered and driven by grinning men who waved to friends and sometimes complete strangers. It was an irony of the EMP blasts that those whose vehicles were oldest were those least affected.
Garages were still shut but the electricity was back in a third of the city and standpipes were already being removed from at least one arrondissement, which now had water. Shops were reopening. All of the newsfeeds had miraculously been restored. Foreign reporters were busy doing talking heads about how El Iskandryia was slowly getting back on its feet.
On his way out of the city, Raf halted the Bentley beside an overflowing irrigation ditch and tossed in the tiny recorder. The woman on it had died long before he was born; and although the recording, smuggled at great risk from a cellar in Kosovo, had not been allowed as evidence at a later trial, a copy of the recording had found its way to Amnesty. Their “democracy in action” radio advertisement was judged political and banned in twenty-four of the twenty-six countries in which it was due to run.
“What now?”
“His Excellency Ashraf al-Mansur . . .” St. Cloud’s majordomo was careful not to look at his master. Not seeing things he shouldn’t see formed a substantial part of his duties. “He demands admittance.” The small Scot spoke the word with such relish that the Marquis looked up and almost blew his carefully constructed, syncopated rhythm.
Luckily the object of his interest kept moving, eyes fixed into the far distance. Drugs, familiarity or fear had emptied the adolescent’s smooth face of anything except boredom and an instinct for absolute obedience.
“Show him in.”
“Sir?”
“Show in al-Mansur.”
The majordomo bowed and withdrew, walking backward from the chamber.
“The Marquis will see you now.” He gestured politely towards a large door and the unacceptability of what lay beyond. “You may find him . . .” The majordomo hesitated. “A little distracted.”