“You’re afraid.”
“Afraid? I’m scared shitless. You, me . . . it’s just a matter of time.”
“The will of God,” Sarah said.
“You believe that?”
She thought about it. “I used to, kind of still do. Maybe I just want . . .”
“Yeah.” Ka put his arm round her shoulders and this time she didn’t push him away . . .
In the back of the truck was a thermoflage net, fitted with a pocket at each corner that could be filled with stones or loaded with sand, for when the terrain was impossible to peg. As well as blanking out thermal signatures, the huge net stealthed radar. Or so the Colonel said and whatever that meant, it sounded good.
The smashed boat was far behind them and night had come in. Heat still radiated from the sand but the temperature of the air was in free fall, latent heat losing out to the sprinkling of cold stars overhead.
“We’d be better sleeping inside . . .” Ka made it almost a question.
“Front seat?”
“That’s still sticky. It should be the back.”
Sarah’s grunt was doubtful.
“It’s going to get colder,” warned Ka. Something experience had told Sarah already. Being out in the emptiness without a bag or fire was no joke and her survival blanket was back with the . . .
“Hey,” he reached out, “it’s okay.”
She cried when they lay side by side on folded matting in the back of the yellow Seraphim, hot tears for what she’d lost. Though crying made no real sense, because everything she’d ever had to lose, Sarah had long since thought gone. Except her life maybe, and she was finding that increasingly hard to care about.
And so Ka held her tight and muttered his desolate promises into her ear. That he would look after her and any soldiers who came after them were dead, that the war would stop once the river dried up . . .
And she let his words wash over her and by the time Ka stopped promising and climbed clumsily on top, she’d stopped crying. It was his tears that fell into her face and breasts as he moved slowly above her, his quiet sobs the last thing she heard before they both fell into sleep.
CHAPTER 21
10th October
“Present,” said Raf, tossing the scrawny animal at Hani so that it landed claws out and stuck to her bare shoulder. “This one doesn’t need batteries.”
“Ouch.” Grabbing the cat by the scruff of its neck, Hani yanked back its head and glared. The animal glared right back and five seconds into their staring contest it began to purr.
“The sound of nine lives,” said Raf.
Hani raised her dark eyebrows.
“Purring is a healing mechanism. 27–44Hz. That frequency helps bones mend and heals cuts. It works on humans too . . .”
Sunday morning, at a stone table in the madersa’s walled courtyard, the splash of the marble fountain Raf had paid to be mended cutting through the clatter of Donna working nearby in her huge kitchen. Breakfast was spread out in front of them, almost untouched.
Coffee for Raf, orange juice for Hani.
Having drunk her juice, Hani had swallowed a token mouthful of balila and been on the point of getting down when Raf beat her to it and went to get his apology. Which was what the almost-cat was. For asking Hani how she found Avatar . . . Right question, wrong way.
“For me?”
Raf nodded.
“What does it eat?”
“Well . . .” He considered her question. “Bats are its favourite . . . That’s a joke,” Raf added hastily, when Hani started to look worried. “Tell Donna to get it some meat.”
“What’s it called?”
Raf shrugged.
“Uncle Ashraf,” Hani’s voice was mock sweet. “If it’s a boy can he live in the haremlek?” Hani still had problems getting her head round the idea of anything male being allowed near the second floor of the madersa. Centuries of tradition were a hard mind-set to break.
“It’s a girl,” said Raf, “and she can’t live there . . . but she can visit, all right? She lives in the courtyard . . .”
“. . . or the kitchens.”
Raf pretended to think about that, knowing already that he would let Hani have her way. “Maybe,” he said. “Provided you clean up any mess and Donna agrees.”
“She will,” said Hani, with the absolute certainty of a child who knows she has the winning hand in a particular relationship. With that, Hani slid from her seat, not to go ask Donna but to find Khartoum. She needed to have a serious discussion about a sensible name.
Having taken the dirty breakfast plates back to the kitchen, Raf stopped to check an update on the ISK rolling news channel, which was all Donna ever watched. Bodies had been found in a derelict house near Mahmoudiya following a tip-off, and a nightclub called Sarahz, on the corner of Gumhuriya, had been firebombed, although the damage was less than it could have been.
According to Ferdie Abdullah, the channel’s elegant if elderly anchorman, these events were not related.
CHAPTER 22
13th October
Changing down a gear, General Koenig Pasha slung his favourite car around a corner and glanced at his passenger. “We got the murderer,” he said casually and smiled to see disbelief freeze the Senator’s face.
“When?” Senator Liz was so shocked she forgot to be polite.
“A couple of days ago. My Chief of Detectives . . .” The call from Raf had come the previous evening. It seemed the killer had been killed. According to a cross-crime/evidence-sifting algorithm run that afternoon, seminal fluid taken from the girl butchered on Hamzah’s beach gave an exact DNA match to a man found murdered in a deserted house in Mahmoudiya. Ashraf Bey proclaimed himself as surprised as the General.
“This man,” said the American. “When will he stand trial?”
“Never,” the General announced airily.
“But surely . . .”
“I’m afraid not.”
If the boxlike black Bentley lacked the élan of the General’s two-tone 1936 Rolls-Royce Phantom III or the racing lines of his green 1937 Hispano-Suiza, it made up for that in raw power, being a two-handed broadsword to the others’ rapier.
The General liked cars much more than he liked people, most of whom lacked a quarter of the Bentley’s character. And he decided that if Senator Liz Elsing had been a car, she’d have been a Ford, reliable, bland and irritating. He, however, would have been this Bentley.
“It seems the murderer died,” added the General. For propriety’s sake, this was the point at which he should have said under questioning, because the woman would expect no less. However, as her traditional Western prejudices could be relied upon to fill in that gap for herself, the General changed gear instead and heard the motor slow to a throaty, law-breaking roar. A roar that impressed him more than anything the Senator might say.
Originally made in 1931 and totally rebuilt in 1993 at the orders of a Sudanese drummer whose fingers could coax rhythms from goatskin that defied simple mathematical definition, the eight-litre vehicle had been presented to the General by Hamzah Quitrimala. A small token of the industrialist’s appreciation for being given permission to build the Midas Refinery.
The red leather driver’s seat on which Koenig Pasha sat was as battered and shiny as a club chair. The walnut trim on the dash was solid, not veneer, and years of careful hand-polishing had produced a patina that would enhance the most elegant antique.
Which it was, the General reminded himself. Though it was hard to remember that fact when the car’s 7,983cc of in-line power could still accelerate its bricklike body to 110 mph. Only one hundred had been built and most of those with the 144-inch wheelbase. The General’s featured the 156.