"Wait here," said Lady Maryam, "while I see if my husband is awake."
Tracking her footsteps across flagstones, Raf followed them up a flight of stairs and across bare boards. The knock at a distant door was surprisingly gentle.
A creak of hinges died when the door shut, leaving Raf with a waterfall of near silences, none of them significant because they were not what Raf listened for. Below the clatter of dishes on a work surface and the small-arms pop of water pipes stretching, he heard the rustle of wind through a pine tree beyond the window. The wings of an owl. Slow and methodical. And under this the claws of a rat scurrying across the gravel at the front of the farmhouse where Major Gide's guards patrolled creaking gates. Falling through silences, one at a time. Hyperreal . . .
"Uncle Ashraf!"
Ashraf Bey came awake to find himself watched by Hani, Murad and Lady Maryam. There was one other person present. A thin man with swept-back grey hair and blue eyes above a hawk nose that had once been broken. A day's worth of white stubble only heightened the hollowness of his cheeks. And he leant heavily on a stick. All the same, there was a ferocious intensity to his gaze; as if he burned with fever or was some celestial body in its final stage of immolation.
"So you're Sally's child . . ." The Emir's smile was sad. "You know," he said, "she told me you died. And then you turn up all those years later in El Iskandryia. I wouldn't have believed it without seeing you."
The hand that shook Raf's own was hot, dry like paper, the bones beneath the age-bruised skin weak as twigs. Even the slight grip Raf gave was enough to make the old man wince. There'd been a dozen things Raf had always wanted to say to his father and none of them seemed appropriate.
What the man opposite felt, Raf found hard to tell.
"Don't you want to talk to each other?" Hani demanded.
"It can wait," said the Emir. "What are a few minutes after this long?"
When the old man walked, it was slowly, leaning heavily on his stick. And at every change of level Murad Pasha positioned himself at the Emir's side so the old man could reach out and steady himself. A fact Lady Maryam obviously hated, to judge from the sourness of her expression.
Although that could also have been down to the Emir's refusal to admit she even existed. She might as well have been a trophy mounted on the wall since she obviously created in him the disquiet that the boar's head seemed to inspire in her.
The farmhouse had been built into the hill, with its back only slightly higher than the front. This meant that the room into which they finally passed had earth reaching two-thirds of the way up its outside walls; good for warmth in winter and useful in other ways too.
"Don't tell me," Raf said, "the place was like this when Eugenie found it."
Emir Moncef smiled.
"She made a few adjustments," he admitted. "Mostly involving chicken wire and concrete. Well, loosely . . ." Which was true. If chicken wire included military-grade titanium mesh and reinforced polyfoam walls could be described as concrete.
"How much of the farmhouse is actually left?"
"Ask Major Gide," he said and clapped his hands.
It seemed the answer was virtually nothing. Apart, that was, from the original eagle gateposts, the granite fireplace and the flagstones in the hall. All walls, internal and external, conformed to Moscow's best standards for blast resistance. Steel-cored doors hid beneath veneers of oak. Screamer wire looped the immediate forest at ankle height. A Molniya spysat hovered high overhead, streaming live data to combat software stashed in the cellar. The fat pantiles on the roof featured thermal feedback to keep the surface at ground ambient, day and night. Even the glass in the windows, double-glazed and shatterproof, vibrated at a random pitch to confuse anyone hidden outside with a parabolic mic.
All of it was black tek. All of it shipped in contravention of numerous UN resolutions banning the sales to Ifriqiya of weapons-grade technology.
"Those hunters," said Raf.
"Georgian Spetsnaz."
"What about the boar?" Hani demanded.
"Fake," interrupted the Emir. "Eugenie de la Croix's idea." He nodded to Hani and smiled at Murad, who just looked at him, eyes wide, then glanced between the Emir and Raf and scowled.
"You think we look alike," Moncef said. It wasn't a question.
The small, dark-eyed boy nodded but Hani just shook her head.
"No," she told the Emir, "you look way older."
"It's flu," Lady Maryam said when Raf finally asked.
"You're sure?"
"Of course, I'm sure." Lady Maryam's voice was sharp.
"How do you know?" Raf demanded. He'd already seen the whole farmhouse and apart from two large rooms upstairs, one used by the Emir, with another on the ground floor now claimed by Lady Maryam, meaning Major Gide had to share the dorm with her troops, that was it. Apart from the hall, kitchen and cellar. The Spetsnaz slept at a house in the village. One of the major's jumpsuited teenagers did the cooking. There was no one else and nothing that looked like a surgery. As it was, Raf and the others were going to have to make their way back to Tunis that night because anything else presented too much of a risk.
"Major Gide is also his doctor," Lady Maryam said shortly. "I'm surprised you didn't know that."
They were back in the hall by the fire. The darkness outside was such that stars bled diamonds across black velvet through the one window left uncurtained. The longer he stayed, the jumpier Lady Maryam became, her politeness becoming ever more brittle by the minute. She'd already added Murad to the list of things at which she was unable to look, banishing Hani and her cousin to the kitchen.
"I should go," Raf said.
"Yes," agreed Lady Maryam and as she clapped her hands a wattle of flesh on her wrist quivered. She was old, Raf realized. The way the Emir was old. Made older by bitterness and four decades of marital exile. All she had on her side was that her son had been born first.
"I'll have someone fetch the children," Lady Maryam said.
Raf nodded. "That would be kind," he replied, knowing that kindness had nothing to do with it. "But first I need to ask the Emir some questions . . . That's why I'm here," Raf said, when the woman looked at him blankly. Turning for the stairs, he was irritated to hear Lady Maryam's heavy steps following behind.
"I need to see him alone."
"He's my husband," said Lady Maryam.
And my father, apparently, Raf said. But he said it under his breath.
The huge room was hot and dark. The smell of vomit obvious. A glass of water stood on a table beside a hardly touched bowl of couscous. Most of what had been eaten splattered the floorboards beside the bed.
Within the round belly of a wood-burning stove flames flickered. On a mattress, leaning back against his pillows lay the old man, his pillowcases tallowed with sweat. A window that shouldn't have been open was. So it was just as well that Lady Maryam remained outside, kept from entering by a shout that reduced her husband to a coughing fit.
"She keeps cooking me food," the Emir said tiredly when his breath was back. He smiled at Raf's surprise. "Don't worry," he added. "I make her eat a spoonful of everything first. She's only here to look after me because she knows how much I hate it."
It was Raf's turn to smile.
"So tell me," said the Emir, "before we talk about things that matter. What did you do to get her wretched son so upset? I've had Kashif on the line swearing undying loyalty and warning me not to trust you." The Emir sounded amused. "What did you do, besides tell him you were now Chief of Police? Which, I have to say, was news to me . . ."