On either side of the pasha his guards had gone very still. Maybe it was Kashif's tone of voice or perhaps he had some signal like a finger tapping against his nose, a shift of his weight or a certain nod of his head. Most people in his position had special signs and ways of giving instructions.
One of them must have said club this impostor to the ground.
"Well done," said the voice. Raf ignored it. He had more important things to do than talk to the fox.
Twisting steadily, Raf pulled against his shackles until he felt one arm dislocate. It hurt no more than many other things in his life and far less than waking after the operation that replaced his kidneys as a child. About as much as a beating he once took in Seattle from a street punk called Wild Boy, back when they both worked for Hu San.
Raf hadn't seen the blow coming. Hadn't even felt the pistol butt that brought oblivion, the state to which his life seemed eternally drawn. One minute Raf was standing facing Kashif Pasha, then darkness came.
When Raf woke the first time he was in a waiter's uniform. The white blindness in his eyes the afterglow of a camera flash; and for a moment, floating on pain and watching the camera burn on the inside of his eyelids, Raf believed he was young again.
And then he knew he wasn't and hadn't been for a very long time.
CHAPTER 44
Friday 11th March
Opening the door was easy. Hani just pushed a button that read emergency release and a swirl of blissfully cool air exploded onto Ibn Chabbat Square. To close the door behind her she hit a button marked shut. This button was on the inside, obviously enough. And then they were in the coach, examining its hydraulic seats and checking the spiral stairs that led to a glass observation bubble.
"Too obvious," said Hani.
At the very rear of the coach was a wall of showers and toilets (two of each, divided into male and female). Between these and the seating area farther forward was a short corridor featuring a couple of sliding doors on each side. So the bus went seats/narrow corridor/wall of loos where a back window should be. The sliding doors were marked stateroom 1, 2, 3 and 4 . . .
"I don't get it," Murad complained, not for the first time.
"Good," Hani told him. "Stick with that."
She pushed him through one of the sliding doors, having first flipped up its lock with a penknife, an act of breaking and entering made much easier than she expected by the coachmakers' fear of litigation, which guaranteed that every door was simplicity itself to open from the outside should the need arise. Which, in Hani's opinion, it had.
A man's room, Russian to judge from the phrase book and an open magazine left on the side. "Try the next one," said Hani and bundled Murad back through the sliding door, relocking it behind her.
A woman, travelling alone. The upper bunk unmade, blankets still folded, the lower one exhibiting neatly turned-back covers and a perfectly straight pillow. Also Soviet. Too neat by half. "We'll try the other side," Hani said.
Both bunks in the next cabin had been used. The cover on the bottom one hung neatly, the cover to the top bunk was still crumpled. A Bible in English, translated by someone called St. James. Hani didn't want to be prejudiced, but . . .
Actually that could be good.
On a bedside locker, open and facedown, lay a Discovery Channel guide to Ifriqiya, its spine cracked in half a dozen places. A handful of foreign change filled a saucer.
"E pluribus unum . . ." From one, many. Or was it, from many, one? Hani's Latin was too rusty for her to be certain which it was if either. So she put down the coin and picked up a flowery dressing gown draped over a peg on the door.
"Nylon," she told Murad.
The garment was surprisingly short, albeit still long enough to drag on the carpet when Hani tried it on without sandals. It was the gown's width that impressed her. She and Murad could have hidden inside the thing three times over.
"This'll do," Hani said with the certainty of someone who distrusted thin people even if she was one. Years of living with Aunt Nafisa had seen to that. "We hide here."
"Hide?"
"Okay, then," said Hani, settling herself on the floor. "We wait."
Around dusk, Hani heard the tourists finally clamber aboard and felt the coach settle on its dampers. Or maybe it was springs? Mechanical things weren't really her area. Computers now . . . But hard as it was to believe, the e pluribus unum couple making this trip were doing so without a single computer, PDA or screen. Unless they'd taken the lot with them and Hani found that hard to believe.
"We're moving," said Murad, his expression worried.
"That's what we want to happen," Hani told him. She indicated a spot next to her on the carpet and Murad looked doubtful. He was still slightly afraid of her, Hani realized. And of everything else. Beneath that buttoned-down manner her cousin was as raw to the world as she was, maybe more so, because she knew how to adapt while Murad was still learning.
Meanwhile he just looked bemused.
"Uncle Ashraf will be fine," Hani promised, realizing as soon as she spoke that this was not what worried the boy. She might worry about her uncle but Murad had his own problems, ones unknown to her.
"Do you think getting older makes you weaker?" Murad demanded suddenly.
Hani thought about it. "I thought it made you stronger."
"That's what they tell you," said Murad, "but is it true? I feel like I know less every day. Everything always used to be clear but now . . ."
"What was clear?" Hani asked.
"Knowing what to do . . ."
"And were you allowed to do it?"
They sat together until Murad was so desperate for a pee that he could sit still no longer. Hani didn't tell him she also needed the loo. Some things were still private for girls.
"Use the basin," Hani said . . . "Now rinse it out," she suggested afterwards.
Murad and Hani then had a brief discussion about whether or not to bolt their door from inside. Hani won and the bolt was left open. Darkness arrived long before someone finally slid a key into the lock.
"We have to get them in here," Hani said.
"What? We're not going to . . ."
"No," said Hani. "I've already told you, I just need them to myself for a few minutes. We . . ." she amended. "We need them."
"Why?"
"Because we do," Hani announced firmly and together they crawled into a narrow space previously occupied by a suitcase.
"Who moved that?" The voice was Midwestern American and female, puzzled rather than angry. Hani didn't care who the voice belonged to, she liked them already. "Carl, Carl . . ." The admonition was addressed to thin air. It had to be, because only one pair of legs could be seen in the room.
White plastic sandals shuffled over to the wall, the case rose from the floor and then it was being tipped on its side and pushed towards Murad.
He grunted.
That was what they'd agreed on, a simple grunt. Now came the dangerous bit when the cabin's owner might shout or rush out into the coach and demand help. They'd decided how to handle this too.
Hani whimpered.
"Who's there?"
The case pulled back, tipped upright.
"Come out," the woman demanded. "Come out right now."
Murad crawled from under the bunk and scrambled to his feet. His eyes were lowered and his shoulders slumped. Inside his head he was trying to remember how Hani had suggested he should shuffle his shoes.
"Oh great. A thief." The woman sounded exasperated. "I suppose you've already pocketed all our stuff." Her glance took in the whole cabin, all five paces of it and found nothing missing. "Maybe not," she admitted, "but then what are you doing here? And what happened to your face?" She took Murad's chin in her fingers and turned his head to the light, tutting as she did so. "Someone hit you?"