The Arabesk Trilogy Omnibus (34 page)

Zara shook her head, still troubled. She believed Ashraf Bey when he said he’d been in prison rather than working at the Consulate; at least, she did most of the time. What she didn’t believe was that the Emir wasn’t his father. And she knew that was a double negative but didn’t care. She needed to see her father and, since she couldn’t go home, she was on her way to meet him at Hamzah Plaza, though he didn’t yet know that.

Her hair was perfect. Her make up so immaculate that no bruises were visible. Even her lip looked normal.

Straightening her shoulders, Zara adjusted the lapels of a dark Dior suit she’d just carded at Marshall & Snellgrove—having woken a personal buyer to get the relevant boutique opened early—and stalked across the square towards a building she’d never before bothered to visit, her father’s HQ.

The building she approached was black, with the pillars of white marble and a three-storey entrance carved from red sandstone and modelled on a horseshoe arch in M’dina. Her father was very proud of his building. The architectural critics had been less kind.
Ersatz Moorish
was one of their gentler comments.

What sounded like rain turned out to be an alabaster fountain set in the middle of a sunken garden. A thing of elegant lines and stunning simplicity, the fountain had been carved a millennium before for one of the princelings of Granada. Her father had never mentioned its purchase, far less what it might have cost.

Zara swept past the fountain and in through a revolving door that began to spin just before she reached it. Ahead of her waited a bank of elevators with glistening mahogany surrounds and brass doors polished to a shine. Any one of them would take her up to the top floor.

“Miss…” A rapidly approaching security guard almost but not quite raised his voice as he glided across the foyer, intent on stopping her reaching the lifts. In his face politeness battled with exasperation. Politeness won. His eyes had already priced her suit and noted her air of confidence but he allowed himself a second glance as he got closer, to confirm what he already suspected… He didn’t recognize her.

Zara stopped.

“Visitors have to sign in.” He motioned towards a distant reception area where a young woman stood watching them. “You do have an appointment?”

“No,” said Zara, “I haven’t. But my father will see me.”

She punched the button on a lift and watched the doors slide open, almost silently. The security guard was still looking suitably appalled when she stepped inside. He probably had a kid, Zara reminded herself, plus a wife who was bound to be pregnant, a mortgage… He needed the job she was busy losing him.

“Ring my father,” said Zara. “Tell him I’m on my way up. Say you couldn’t stop me.”

The man nodded and stood back, instantly relieved. He’d remember her kindness and not the arrogance that had let her walk through him, Zara knew that. And he wouldn’t realize what he’d just told her—that her father was already in…

Which meant he’d had an argument with her mother. Zara smiled. Her father only ever came in early on days following an argument. Some weeks he forgot about going to the office at all. Why should he, when anyone he needed to see could be ordered to come to him? His office on the top floor existed mainly to remind people who was in charge.

Hamzah didn’t do lunch with visiting foreigners—he had staff to do that for him—and he didn’t take taxis or even use his chauffeured stretch much. He walked, because money bought time and that created space for him to walk if he wanted to, which he invariably did. More people saw him that way. Remembered he’d begun as one of their own.

She loved him, of course. Feared him, too. More than she feared her mother, if she was honest. Checking her hair in a mirror, Zara brushed one sleeve to remove dust from where she had touched an alley wall and stepped out, head high, when the lift reached its destination and the doors opened. She expected to see her father waiting at the top but he wasn’t. Instead she got a small woman with tightly cropped grey hair and large amber beads.

“Miss Zara?”

“Olga Kaminsky?”

The woman’s eyes widened and Zara smiled her best smile. “My father mentions you,” she said lightly. “Always compliments.” Zara could almost see the woman reassess her, as she took in Zara’s suit, her immaculate hair, the discreet and appropriate jewellery and the folded newspaper tucked under one arm. She didn’t look like a spoilt brat who got herself on the news for being in trouble with the
morales.
Which was precisely the point.

“I’m sorry to turn up unannounced, but I was hoping to see my father.”

Olga Kaminsky nodded. “He’s expecting you.”

The door to her father’s office was ebony carved into arabesques and inlaid with leaves of pink or pale blue marble. Olga knocked once and went in without waiting to be invited.

“Miss Zara,” she announced, stopping in front of a huge desk.

Duty done, Olga Kaminsky turned to Zara and smiled. “How about some coffee? And maybe a croissant…?”

“Well,” said Hamzah as the door shut. “Coffee
and
croissant—and I’d always been under the impression that Olga didn’t approve of you.”

“How could she not approve?” Zara said. “She hadn’t even met me…”

Hamzah laughed. Neither of them mentioned the fact that Zara hadn’t been home for thirty-six hours. Or why. All the same, he saw how carefully his daughter carried herself as she sat back in a large leather chair without being invited.

“Nice place.”

His office was everything Zara expected. Huge, with windows along two walls, the longest looking north over the Corniche and a blue splash of the Mediterranean beyond. The other looked out over the red-brick edifice of St Mark’s College, where Hamzah had swept floors when he first arrived in Iskandryia.

A mountain of printouts balanced on one of the leather chairs, while an old Toshiba notepad sat open on the sofa. On the wall behind his desk an out-dated assault rifle balanced on two nails. It was old, rusty, stamped out from cheap, sheet steel. A Kalashnikov AK49. Like the fountain outside the office, Zara had never seen it before.

The whole room was a mess, which didn’t surprise her. His study at Glymenapoulo was the only room her mother wasn’t allowed to have cleaned. Here, he didn’t even have someone to nag him about the mess—unless that was Olga’s job.

“Coffee…” The door opened ahead of the knock and his PA walked in holding a tray. “Your Excellency…” Olga served Hamzah his tiny cup of Turkish coffee and beside it she put a plate of rosewater Turkish Delight, studded with almonds. “And here’s yours,” said Olga. Zara got a long cappuccino and a croissant, along with a linen napkin.

As the woman turned to go, Zara realized her father was blushing. For a horrified second she considered that there might be something between Olga and him and then realized that it was the honorific. He’d wanted
Your Excellency
so badly and now it made him blush. Zara smiled. Her father would get used to
effendi,
just as he’d got used to living in a villa surrounded by European antiques. And once he was used to it he’d start to enjoy it. That was his way.

“I suppose you’ve come to tell me you’re not coming home?”

“No,” said Zara. “I’ve come to ask for your help… But you’re right,” she added, recognizing the truth in what he said. “I’m not.”

“Do you want to return to your friends in America?”

“No.” Zara shook her head. “I’m not going to run away. Not even if that’s what you want… This is my city too.”

Hamzah’s nod was approving. “It’s not easy, an unmarried woman living alone. You’ll need an apartment, a driver. I can supply those.”

“Let’s talk about that later,” said Zara, in a voice Hamzah knew meant she would do anything but. “Right now I want to talk about Ashraf Bey.”

Hamzah thought about mentioning his daughter’s face had suddenly gone red and decided against it. The picture of her on the news in that idiotic coat was too clear in his head. Instead, he glanced out of a window, then reached for his cup. The coffee was too hot but he drank it anyway, chasing away its mudlike bitterness with a piece of Turkish delight. “Eat your croissant,” he said, “or Olga will be upset…”

They were negotiating, silently and without words: he knew that. Even in El Iskandryia the gap between what could and what couldn’t be said was vast, and Isk was the most relaxed of the Ottoman cities. A free port and a micro-state. The personal fief of its owner the Khedive—unlike Cairo, which the Khedive held in trust for the Sultan in Stambul.

But freedom was relative. And the gap between father, and daughter still wide. In many families it was unbridgeable. The woman he sat opposite knew less about him than he actually knew about her, which was almost nothing.

He feared she’d taken at least one lover while in New York. But the only real thing he knew about her was what she’d told him the night before she flew, when they were talking obliquely about the three months she’d just spent in a Swiss clinic. Which was that she wasn’t proud of everything she’d done, but she was ashamed of very little.

“I can give him money,” Hamzah said simply. “A route out of Iskandryia if that will help. But I can’t protect him…” He wanted to say more, to ask obvious questions, but for Zara the only question that mattered was the one she asked.

“Why do the police insist he killed his aunt?”

“Maybe he did,” said Hamzah, chewing the edges off a cube of Turkish Delight. He smiled sadly when Zara handed him her napkin. “Have you thought of that?”

“He swears he didn’t.”

“And you believe him?”

Zara bit her lip and nodded, not trusting herself to speak.

“Olga.” He punched a button on his desk. “Tell legal to call me.” Seconds later a screen beeped and the face of a small bald man squinted out at Hamzah. “Excellency?” The voice was reedy, the accent cut-glass Cairene.

“Beys,” said Hamzah. “They have complete
carte blanche.
I’m right, aren’t I…they can’t be arrested?”

The elderly lawyer hesitated. “Up to a point, Excellency…”

A small smile lit Hamzah’s face and he jerked his chin towards the screen to indicate to Zara that she should listen carefully. “What are the exceptions?”

“Two types of murder—of a mullah or a family member—gross blasphemy before two reputable witnesses, and gross outrage of a minor, witnesses ditto.”

“So Ashraf al-Mansur can be arrested?”

“Given that he murdered his aunt, yes…”

Hamzah held up his hand to still Zara’s protest and she suddenly realized she was out of the screen’s line of sight. The lawyer couldn’t see her and so didn’t know she was there.

“Thank you.” Hamzah blanked the screen. “My first question,” he said to Zara, “is why do they
really
want Ashraf al-Mansur? And my second is, who exactly is
they…
any ideas?”

He sat back in his chair. “No? Then I suggest you find out or I suggest your friend does…”

The meeting was over, Zara realized. And what was more staggering than her father treating her as an adult was him treating her as an equal. She’d asked him a question and he’d given her two relevant questions in reply. Either one of which might be the key. Going to America had been a good move, whatever work friends might say. And returning had been the right move too, whatever Zara might sometimes think herself.

“What do I tell your mother about why you’re not coming home?” Hamzah’s voice was neutral. But his eyes widened as Zara pulled off her silk scarf, to reveal that she wore no shirt beneath her Dior jacket, and began to undo her jacket’s black glass buttons. At the last minute, she turned her back on her father and slid the silk jacket down over her shoulders, revealing the marks.

“Tell her what you like.” Ten minutes after Zara left her father’s office and headed on foot towards the General’s mansion, Hani crawled out of her bed, looked round and went to shake Raf. “Zara’s gone,” she said.

“Has she?” Raf sat up, groaned and slid his legs over the edge of the couch. He did his best to sound unconcerned but he needn’t have bothered. Hani was too busy pointing at his feet.

“You’re wearing shoes,” she said.

Yeah, he was. Both of them fully dressed was one of Zara’s conditions for sharing the VSV’s narrow bed, though even being dressed wouldn’t make a difference if Hani told someone he and Zara had shared a mattress. Zara was under twenty-one and behaviour likely to corrupt a minor would be the least of it.

“After I went to sleep,” asked Hani, “did you argue?”

“No,” said Raf, “we talked.”
And got nowhere,
he added silently. At least he didn’t think they’d got anywhere. It was hard to remember with his mind full of Zara’s breasts and the taste of her in his mouth. Maybe she’d believed Nafisa’s death really wasn’t his responsibility. Maybe not. He’d try to work it out when his hangover took a holiday.

Where Zara had gone was solved by a brisk call from Hamzah. “Zara dropped by,” he said, sounding amused. “She said I should give you this.” Hamzah reeled off a string of numbers that became letters towards the end. “Your aunt’s bank details,” he added, seeing the blank look on Raf’s face, “From when I paid Nafisa’s commission…”

“Where’s Zara now?”

“I don’t know,” said Hamzah, “not officially. But unofficially I gather she’s headed in the direction of Shallalat Gardens and the General’s house.” He clicked his fingers and the screen went blank.

Raf groaned. “Coffee,” he begged Hani.

“Tastes horrible,” she replied. But she went hunting all the same until she found tins of cappuccino stacked in a locker at the stern. Peeling back the lid on a tin, Hani took a mouthful and spat it at her feet. “If that’s what you want.” With a shrug and a sigh, she tipped the remains of the can into a saucepan and lit a small ring in the pull-down galley. When the sweet liquid was hot she poured it carefully back into the can.

“Here,” she said.

Raf drank it while she watched, her eyes alert for any hesitation. “Perfect…” He sat back and put his hand behind his aching head, thinking about his aunt’s bank details. “You had a computer at the madersa, didn’t you?”