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birth.
Having reread these, Kashif Pasha demanded the real reports--on the basis that
these must exist. A
request which sent the already nervous archivist into near-terminal decline.
Faced with arranging the forbidden, the archivist tried to explain to Kashif
about secret bags
, inadvertently offering the seventeen-year-old boy a whole new source of
information and income.
Secret bags were kept in a vault below the Bardo, that much the archivist
knew. Once sealed they could only be opened in the presence of a witness,
provided . . . There'd followed a long list of stipulations to which the young
Kashif hadn't bothered to listen.
Practically dragging the archivist to where the man believed the secret bags
were stored, Kashif demanded they both be given entry. With the Emir gone and
that wing otherwise empty, the chamberlain had done the obvious; opened the
front door and saluted smartly. It had taken Kashif ten minutes to identify
the vault and another five to bully someone into unlocking the door. A problem
never to arise
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again after Kashif relieved the porter of his key.
Goatskin, Kashif decided, maybe sheep, nothing too fancy. Cured in a way that
was almost intentionally perfunctory and stitched crudely with gut. Impressive
signatures covered each bag, mostly from his father and occasionally Eugenie.
One from the Soviet ambassador and even one from the Marquis de St.
Cloud. Any person wanting to open a bag to examine its contents had to sign
the outside before the seal was cut. Some of the newer seals were almost
silver, others oxidized down to a dull black.
Kashif was inordinately proud to discover that he had a whole rack to himself.
Seven leather bags in total. Starting with the first, Kashif cut its seal and
began to read an account of his life that he recognized.
He was surly, bad at games and prone to violence. His unbroken run of goals,
his easy knockdowns in boxing and rapid fencing victories owed more to who he
was than to any innate physical talent.
His marks suffered an automatic 25 percent inflation. The French mistress he
liked most had been paid off after complaining that he'd molested her in a
corridor.
The summer Kashif turned seventeen was the year he got his reputation for
working hard. He'd appear every morning at the relevant wing of the Bardo,
notebook in hand and a nervous young archivist two steps behind. And each
evening he'd make his way back to his mother's dar with another courtier's
life pinned to the board of his memory.
He made friends fast that summer and was given three cars, including his first
Porsche and a speedboat he used to take Russian girls water-skiing, until he
hit a sunken rock and an attaché's daughter ended up a casualty. The high
point was when he acquired his own villa on Iles de Kirkeah, from an elderly
general whose devotion to his childless, long-suffering wife was apparently
exceeded only by his devotion to a long string of pretty Moroccan houseboys.
Every bag he chose Kashif dutifully signed, leaving it to the archivist to
repack the contents and affix a new seal. The one for his mother was
especially interesting. Particularly in relation to a visit made to
Gerda Schulte three weeks before she married his father. A surgeon briefly
famous for patenting the only medically undetectable, biologically foolproof
method of restoring virginity. A technique surprisingly popular among the
middle classes of North Africa and the source of her heir's considerable
wealth.
It was a snippet of information Kashif parlayed with his mother into a new
apartment in the Bardo, one with its own entrance. His other knowledge Kashif
kept close as an enemy, deadly as a friend; using it only as necessary once
that first flush of power was gone. Murad wasn't even born when Kashif
discovered the bags and, by the time he was, the bags had gone. Exactly when
they vanished Kashif never discovered. He'd gone to Monte Carlo one Monday and
come back two years later to find the room empty and repainted, awaiting
delivery of an apparently valuable collection of late-nineteenth-century tax
returns.
One thing Kashif knew for certain though. No bag had made reference to his
father having married again.
At least not until that American girl to whom Eugenie introduced him, Murad's
mother. The one who went off a cliff. And the bag that dealt with Moncef's
bastards made no reference to an Ashraf al-Mansur or Ashraf anything else,
come to that . . . Whatever the late Eugenie de la Croix or his father might
claim.
"Afternoon," Raf said to a guard by the side of the path. The man looked at
Major Jalal, trying to work out if he was meant to salute Ashraf Bey or not.
Just to be safe, he saluted anyway.
Up ahead stood Kashif Pasha, with no one else in sight. At least not
obviously; one sniper hid in a clump
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of palms to Raf's left.
Phoenix dactylifera
, tree of the Phoenicians with finger-resembling fruit. Raf had
Hani to thank for that snippet of information.
Another sniper was behind him. The smell of tobacco as Raf entered the
amphitheatre had been too strong not to whisper its warning. That Kashif Pasha
felt such protection was necessary almost made Raf feel better.
"Brother." Raf drawled the word. No greeting and no title, zero hostility
either. Let the other man make the running on this. Kashif Pasha was supposed
to be a poker player, famous for it apparently . . .
Raf smiled.
"Feeling happy about something?" asked Kashif.
"Always glad to see you," Raf said. "You know how it is."
"No," said Kashif, "I can't say I do."
Raf's grin was bleak as he adjusted his Armani shades and smelled the hot
wind. Sweat, fear, anger and triumph. Beneath the distant tobacco and Kashif's
cologne there was a veritable symphony of olfactory molecules being ripped
apart by a breeze that filtered between salt-stunted thorns.
"Oh well," he said.
They stood in the ruins of a small Roman amphitheatre with fifteen circles of
seating cut direct into crumbling pink rock. The central circle was
half-buried in dust and a cheap kiosk near the entrance had signs that read
Closed in seven languages. Its filthy window and padlocked door suggested the
site had been shut since autumn.
There was undoubtedly a lesson there if only Raf had the mind for it, because
according to Khartoum there was a lesson in everything; in appearance and the
reality behind appearance and in the reality behind the first appearance of
reality. In Khartoum's opinion to hunt knowledge was to lose it.
"You seem amused . . ." Kashif's voice was cold. "Am I missing something?"
"We all are," said Raf. "That's the very essence of being human."
Two of Major Jalal's soldiers looked at each other. One of them mouthing to
the other and Raf caught the silent word.
Moncef
. . . His father, that was what they were saying. He was like his father.
Mad.
Even Kashif Pasha nodded. As if willing, for the moment, to admit that the one [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]

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