Since the night Bogatyrev had been killed in Chiriga’s place, I had felt almost every strong emotion a person can. There had been disgust and terror and elation. I had known hate and love, hope and despair. I had been by turns timid and bold. Yet nothing had filled me so completely as the fury that surged in me now. The preliminary jostling was over, and ideas like honor, justice, and duty were submerged beneath the overpowering need to stay alive, to keep from being killed. The time for doubt had passed. I had been threatened—me, personally. That anonymous message had gotten my attention.
My rage was directed immediately at Okking. He was hiding information from me, maybe covering up something, and he was endangering my life. If he wanted to endanger Abdoulaye or Tami, well, I guess that’s police business. But endangering me—that’s my business. When I got to his office, Okking was going to learn that. I was going to teach it to him the hard way.
I was striding fiercely up the Street, seething and rehearsing what I was going to say to the lieutenant. It didn’t take me long to get it all worked out. Okking would be surprised to see me again, only an hour after I’d left his office. I planned to storm in, slam his door so hard the glass would rattle, shove the death threat into his face, and demand a complete recitation of facts. Otherwise I would haul him down to one of the interrogation rooms and bounce him off his own walls for a while. I bet Sergeant Hajjar would give me all the help I wanted, too.
As I got to the gate at the eastern end of the Budayeen, I faltered a bit between steps. A new thought had rammed its way into my mind. I had felt that little tickle of unfinished business this morning when I’d talked to Okking; I’d felt it after seeing Selima’s corpse, too. I always let my unconscious mind work on those tickles, and sooner or later it puzzled them out. Now I had my answer, like an electric buzzer going off in my head.
Question: What is missing from this picture?
Answer: Let’s take a close look. First, we’ve had several unsolved murders in the neighborhood in the last several weeks. How many? Bogatyrev, Tami, Devi, Abdoulaye, Nikki, Selima. Now, what do the police do when they hit a brick wall in a homicide investigation? Police work is repetitive, tedious, and methodical; they bring in all the witnesses again and make them go over their statements in case some vital clue has been neglected. The cops ask the same questions five, ten, twenty, a hundred times. You get dragged down to the station, or they wake you up in the middle of the night. More questions, more of the same dull answers.
With a scoreboard showing six unsolved, apparently related killings, why hadn’t the police been doing more plodding and inspecting and badgering? I hadn’t had to go through my stories a second time, and I doubt that Yasmin or anyone else had to, either.
Okking and the rest of the department had to be laying off. By the life of my honor and my eyes, why weren’t they pursuing this thing? Six dead already, and I was sure that the count would go higher. I had been personally promised at least one more corpse—my own.
When I got to the copshop I went by the desk sergeant without a word. I wasn’t thinking about procedures and protocol, I was thinking about blood. Maybe it was the took on my face or a midnight-black aura I was carrying with me, but no one stopped me. I went upstairs and cut through the maze of corridors until I came to Hajjar, sitting outside Okking’s meager headquarters. Hajjar must have noticed my expression, too, because he just jerked a thumb over his shoulder. He wasn’t going to stand in my way, and he wasn’t going to take his chances with the boss, either. Hajjar wasn’t smart, but he was tricky. He was going to let Okking and me beat on each other, but he wasn’t going to be nearby himself. I don’t remember if I said anything to Hajjar or not. The next thing I recall, I was leaning over Okking’s desk with my right fist wrapped tightly in the bunched cotton cloth of his shirt. We were both screaming.
“What the hell does this mean?” I shouted, waving the computer paper in front of his eyes. That’s all I could get out before I was spun around, dropped, and pinned to the floor by two policemen, while three more covered me with their needle guns. My heart was already racing, it couldn’t beat any faster without exploding. I stared at one of the cops, looking into the tiny black mouth of his pistol. I wanted to kick his face in, but my mobility was restricted.
“Let him go,” said Okking. He was breathing hard, too.
“Lieutenant,” objected one of the men, “if—”
“Let him go. Now.”
They let me go. I got to my feet and watched the uniforms holster their weapons and leave the room. They were all muttering. Okking waited for the last one to cross the threshold, then he slowly closed the door, ran a hand through his hair, and returned to his desk. He was spending a lot of time and effort calming himself. I suppose he didn’t want to talk to me until he got himself under control. Finally he sat down in his swivel chair and looked at me. “What is it?” he asked. No bantering, no sarcasm, no cop’s veiled threats or wheedling. Just as my time for fear and uncertainty had passed, so had Okking’s time for professional disdain and condescension.
I laid the note on his blotter and let him read it. I sat down in a hard, angular plastic chair beside Okking’s desk and waited. I saw him finish reading. He closed his eyes and rubbed them wearily. “Jesus,” he murmured.
“Whoever that James Bond was, he traded in that moddy for another one. He said I’d know which one if I thought about it. Nothing rings any bells with me.”
Okking stared at the wall behind me, calling up the scene of Selima’s murder in his mind. First his eyes got a little wider, then his mouth fell open a bit, and then he groaned. “Oh my God,” he said.
“What?”
“How does Xarghis Moghadhil Khan sound?”
I’d heard the name before, but I wasn’t sure who Khan was. I knew that I wasn’t going to like him, though. “Tell me about him,” I said.
“It was about fifteen years ago. This psychopath proclaimed himself the new prophet of God in Assam or Sikkim or one of those places to the east. He said a gleaming blue angel presented him with revelations and divine proclamations, the most urgent being that Khan go out and jam every white woman he could find and murder anybody who got in his way. He bragged about settling two or three hundred men, women, and children before he was stopped. Killed four more in prison before they executed him. He liked to hack organs out of his victims as sacrifices to his blue metal angel. Different organs for different days of the week or phases of the moon or some goddamn thing.”
There was anxious silence for a few seconds. “He’s going to be a lot worse as Khan than he was as Bond,” I said.
Okking nodded grimly. “Xarghis Moghadhil Khan by himself makes the whole of the Budayeen’s collection of thugs look like cartoon cats and mice.”
I closed my eyes, feeling helpless. “We’ve got to find out if he’s just some lunatic hatchet man or if he’s working for somebody.”
The lieutenant stared past me at the far wall for a moment, turning some idea over in his mind. His right hand toyed nervously with a cheap bronze figure of a mermaid on his desk. Finally he looked at me. “I can help you there,” he said softly.
“I was sure you knew more than you were telling. You know who this Bond-Khan guy is working for. You know I was right about the murders being assassinations, don’t you?”
“We don’t have time for back-patting and medal-pinning. That can come later.”
“You’d better come across with the whole story now. If Friedlander Bey hears that you’re holding back this information, he’ll have you out of your job before you have time to say you’re sorry.”
“I don’t know that for sure, Audran,” said Okking. “But I don’t want to test it.”
“So spell it out: Who was James Bond working for?”
The cop turned away again. When he glanced back at me, there was anguish in his expression. “He was working for me, Audran.”
The plain truth is, that wasn’t what I was expecting to hear. I didn’t know how to react. “Wallat il-’azim,” I murmured. I just let Okking take care of explaining it however he wanted.
“You’re stumbling around in something bigger than a few serial murders,” he said. “I guess you know that, but you don’t have any idea how much bigger. All right. I was getting money from a European government to locate somebody who had fled to the city. This person was in line to rule another country. A political faction in the fugitive’s homeland wanted to assassinate him. The government I work for wanted to find him and bring him back unharmed. You don’t need to know all the details of the intrigue, but that’s the basic idea. I hired ‘James Bond’ to find the man, and also to disrupt the other party’s attempt to assassinate him.”
I took a few seconds to take that all in. It was a pretty good sized chunk to swallow. “Bond killed Bogatyrev. And Devi. And Selima, after he became Xarghis Khan. So I was on the right track from the beginning—Bogatyrev was iced on purpose. It wasn’t an unfortunate accident, as you and Papa and everybody else kept insisting. And that’s why you haven’t been digging deeper into these murders. You know exactly who killed them all.”
“I wish I did, Audran.” Okking looked tired, and a little sick. “I don’t have the slightest idea who’s working for the other side. I have enough clues—the same awful M.O., the bruises and handprints on the tortured bodies, a pretty good description of the killer’s size and weight, a lot of little forensic details like that. But I don’t know who it is, and it scares me.”
“You’re scared? You got a hell of a lot of nerve. Everybody in the Budayeen has been hiding under their covers for weeks, wondering if these two psychos would tap them next, and you’re scared. What the hell are you scared of, Okking?”
“The other side won, the prince was assassinated; but the murders didn’t stop. I don’t know why. The assassination should have ended the matter. The killers are probably eliminating anyone who might identify them.”
I chewed my lip and thought. “I need to back up a little,” I said. “Bogatyrev worked for the legation of one of the Russian kingdoms. How does he tie up with Devi and Selima?”
“I told you I didn’t want to give out all the details. This gets dirty, Audran. Can’t you be satisfied with what I’ve already told you?”
I felt myself getting furious again. “Okking, your fucking hit man is coming after me next. I’ve got a goddamn right to know the whole story. Why can’t you tell your killer to lay off now?”
“Because he’s disappeared. After the prince was killed by the other side, Bond dropped out of sight. I don’t know where he is or how to get in contact with him. He’s working on his own, now.”
“Or else someone else has given him a new set of instructions.” I couldn’t suppress a shudder when the first name that crossed my mind was not Seipolt’s—the logical choice—but Friedlander Bey’s. I knew then that I’d been kidding myself about Papa’s motives: fear for his own life, and a laudable interest in protecting the other citizens of the city. No, Papa was never so straightforward. But could he somehow be behind these terrible events? It was a possibility I could neglect no longer.
Okking was lost in thought, too, a glint of fear in his eyes. He played with his little mermaid some more. “Bogatyrev wasn’t just a minor clerk with that Russian legation. He was the Grand Duke Vasili Petrovich Bogatyrev, the younger brother of King Vyacheslav of Byelorussia and the Ukraine. His nephew, the crown prince, had gotten to be too much of an embarrassment at court and had to be sent away. Neofascist parties in Germany wanted to find the prince and bring him back to Byelorussia, thinking that they could use him to topple his father from the throne and replace the monarchy with a German-controlled ‘protectorate.’ Remnants of the Soviet Communists supported them; they wanted the monarchy destroyed, too, but they planned to replace it with their own sort of government.”
“A temporary alliance of the far right wing and the far left,” I said.
Okking smiled wanly. “It’s happened before.”
“And you were working for the Germans.”
“That’s right.”
“Through Seipolt?”
Okking nodded. He wasn’t enjoying any bit of this. “Bogatyrev wanted you to find the prince. When you did, the duke’s man, whoever he is, would kill him.”
I was astonished. “Bogatyrev was setting up the murder of his own nephew? His brother’s son?”
“To preserve the monarchy at home, yes. They’d decided it was unfortunate but necessary. I told you it was dirty. When you wander into the highest level of international affairs, it’s almost always dirty.”
“Why did Bogatyrev need me to find his nephew?”
Okking shrugged. “In the past three years of the prince’s exile, he’d managed to disguise himself and hide pretty well. Sooner or later, he must have realized his life was in danger.”
“Bogatyrev’s ‘son’ wasn’t killed in a traffic accident, then. You lied to me; he was still alive when you told me the matter was closed. But you say the Byelorussians did kill him, after all.”
“He was that sex-change friend of yours. Nikki. Nikki was really the Crown Prince Nikolai Konstantin.”
“Nikki?” I said in a flat voice. I was unnerved by the accumulated weight of the truths I’d demanded to hear, and by the weight of regret. I remembered Nikki’s terrified voice during that short, interrupted telephone call. Could I have saved her? Why hadn’t she trusted me more? Why didn’t she tell me the truth, tell me what she must have suspected? “Then Devi and the other two Sisters were killed—”
“Just because they were too close to her. It didn’t make any difference whether or not they really knew anything dangerous. The German killer—Khan, now—and the Russian guy aren’t taking any chances. That’s why you’re on the list, too. That’s why . . . this.” The lieutenant opened a drawer and took something out, flipped it across his desk toward me.
It was another note on computer paper, just like mine. Only it was addressed to Okking.
“I’m not leaving the police station until this is all over,” he said. “I’m staying right here with a hundred fifty friendly cops watching my back.”
‘I hope none of them is Bogatyrev’s knifeman,” I said. Okking winced. The idea had already occurred to him, too.
I wished I knew how long the hit lists were, how many names followed mine and Okking’s. It was a shock when I realized that Yasmin could very well be on them. She knew at least as much as Selima had; more, because I’d told her what I knew and what I guessed. And Chiriga, was her name there? What about Jacques, Saied, and Mahmoud? And how many other people that I knew? Thinking about Nikki, who’d gone from prince to princess to dead, thinking about what I had ahead of me, I felt crushed; I looked at Okking and realized that he was crushed, too. Far worse than I. His career in the city was over, now that he had admitted to being a foreign agent.
“I don’t have any more to tell you,” he said.
“If you learn something, or if I need to get in touch with you . . . ”
“I’ll be here,” he said in a dead voice. “Inshallah.” I got up and left his office. It was like escaping from prison.
Outside the station house, I undipped my phone and spoke into it as I walked. I called the hospital and asked for Dr. Yeniknani.
“Hello, Mr. Audran,” came his deep voice.
“I wanted to find out about the old woman, Laila.”
“It’s too soon to tell, to be quite frank. She may recover with the passage of time, but it doesn’t seem likely. She is old and frail. I have her sedated and she’s under constant observation. I’m afraid she might fall into an irreversible coma. Even if that doesn’t happen, there’s an extremely high probability that she will never regain her intelligent faculties. She will never be able to care for herself or perform the simplest tasks.”
I took a deep breath and let it out. I felt that I was to blame.
“All is as Allah ordains,” I said numbly.
“Praise be to Allah.”
“I will ask Friedlander Bey to take upon himself the cost of her medical expenses. What happened to her was a result of my investigations.”
“I understand,” said Dr. Yeniknani. “There is no need to speak to your sponsor. The woman is being treated as a charity case.”
“I speak for Friedlander Bey as well as myself: we cannot adequately express our thanks.”
“It is a sacred duty,” he said simply. “Our technicians have determined what was recorded on that module. Do you wish to know?”
“Yes, of course,” I said.
“There are three bands. The first, as you know, is a recording of the responses of a large, powerful, but starved, maltreated, and ruthlessly provoked cat, apparently a Bengal tiger. The second band is the brain impression of a human infant. The last band is the most repellent of all. It is the captured, fading consciousness of a very recently murdered woman.”
“I knew I was looking for a monster, but I’ve never heard anything so depraved in all my life.” I was thoroughly disgusted. This lunatic had no moral restraints on him at all.
“A piece of advice, Mr. Audran. Never use such a cheaply manufactured module. They are crudely recorded, with a great deal of harmful ‘noise.’ They lack the safeguards built into the industrially made modules. Too frequent use of underground moddies results in damage to your central nervous system, and through it, your whole body.”
“I wonder where it will end?”
“Simple enough to predict: The killer will get a duplicate module made.”
“Unless Okking or I or someone else gets to him first.”
“Take heed, Mr. Audran. He is, as you say, a monster.”
I thanked Dr. Yeniknani and returned the phone to my belt. I couldn’t stop thinking about how wretched and miserable a life Laila had remaining to her. I thought also about my nameless foe, who used a commission from the Byelorussian royalists as a license to indulge his repressed desire to commit atrocities. The news from the hospital changed my half-formed plans entirely. Now I knew precisely what I had to do, and I had some good ideas about how to get it done.
Going up the Street, I met Fuad the Terminally Witless. “Marhaba,” he said. He squinted up at me, one hand shading his weak eyes.
“How’s it goin’, Fuad?” I said. I wasn’t in the mood to stand around and talk with him. I had some preparations to make.
“Hassan wants to see you. Something to do with Friedlander Bey. Said you’d know what he meant.”
“Thanks, Fuad.”
“Do you? Know what he means?” He blinked at me, hungry for gossip.
I sighed. “Yeah, right, I know. Got to run.” I tried to tear myself away from him.
“Hassan said it was really important. What’s it all about, Marîd? You can tell me. I can keep a secret.”
I didn’t answer; I doubted that Fuad could keep anything, least of all a secret. I just clapped him on the shoulder like a pal, and gave him my back. I stopped in Hassan’s shop before I went home. The American kid was still sitting on his stool in the empty room. He gave me a chilling come-hither smile. I was sure now: this boy liked me. I didn’t say a word, but ducked into the back and found Hassan. He was doing what he was always doing, checking invoices and packing lists against his cartons and crates. He saw me and smiled. Apparently he and I were on good terms now; it was so hard keeping track of Hassan’s moods that I had stopped trying. He set down his clipboard, put one hand on my shoulder, and kissed my cheek in the Arabic manner. “Welcome, O my darling nephew!”
“Fuad said you had something to tell me from Papa.”
Hassan’s face grew serious. “That is only what I told Fuad. I tell you this from myself. I am worried, O Maghrebi. I am more than worried—I am terrified. I have not slept soundly for four nights, and when I do nap, I have the most horrible dreams. I thought nothing could be worse than when I found Abdoulaye . . . when I found him . . . ” His voice faltered. “Abdoulaye was not a good man, we both know that; yet he and I were closely associated for a number of years. You know that I employed him, even as Friedlander Bey employs me. Now I have been warned by Friedlander Bey that—” Hassan’s voice broke and he was unable to say anything for a moment. I was afraid that I would have to watch this bloated pig go to pieces right in front of me. The idea of patting his hand and saying “There, there,” was absolutely loathsome. He got himself collected, though, and went on. “Friedlander Bey warned me that more of his friends may yet be in danger. That includes you, O clever one, and myself as well. I am sure you understood the risks weeks ago, but I am not a brave man. Friedlander Bey did not choose me to perform your task because he knows I have no courage, no inner resources, no honor. I must be harsh with myself, because now I can see the truth. I have no honor. I think only of myself, of the danger that may confront me, of the possibility that I may suffer and end up just as—” At that point Hassan did break down. He wept. I waited patiently for the shower to pass; slowly the clouds parted, but even then no sun glimmered through.
“I’m taking my own precautions, Hassan. We all should take precautions. Those who’ve been killed died because they were foolish or too trusting, which is the same thing.”
“I trust no one,” said Hassan.
“I know. That may keep you alive, if anything will.”
“How reassuring,” he said dubiously. I don’t know what he wanted—a written promise that I would guarantee his scabrous, pitiful little life?
“You’ll be all right, Hassan; but if you’re so afraid, why not ask Papa for asylum until these killers are caught?”
“Then you think there are more than one?”
“I know it.”
“That makes it all twice as bad.” He struck his chest with his fist several times, appealing to Allah for justice: what had Hassan ever done to deserve this? “What will you do?” the plump, fat-faced merchant said.
“I don’t know yet,” I said.
Hassan nodded thoughtfully. “Then may Allah protect you,” he said.
“Peace be upon you, Hassan,” I said.
“And upon you be peace. Take with you this gift from Friedlander Bey.” The “gift” was another envelope thick with crisp currency.
I went back out through the cloth hanging and the bare shop without giving Abdul-Hassan a glance. I decided to stop in to see Chiri, to give her a warning and some advice; I also wanted to hide out there for half an hour and forget that I was running for my life.
Chiriga greeted me with her characteristic enthusiasm. “Habari gani!” she cried, the Swahili equivalent of “What’s up?” Then she narrowed her eyes when she saw my implants. “I heard, but I was waiting to see you before I believed. Two?”
“Two,” I admitted.
She shrugged. “Possibilities,” she murmured. I wondered what she was thinking. Chiri was always a couple of steps ahead of me when it came to figuring out ways to pervert and corrupt the best-intentioned of legal institutions.
“How’ve you been?” I asked.
“All right, I guess. No money, nothing happening, same old goddamn boring job.” She showed me her sharpened teeth to let me know that while the club might not be making money and the girls and changes weren’t making money, Chiri was making money. And she wasn’t bored, either.
“Well,” I said, “we’re all going to have to work to keep it all right.”
She frowned. “Because of the, uh . . . ” She waved a hand in a little circle.
I waved a hand in a little circle, too. “Yeah, because of the ‘uh.’ Nobody but me wants to believe these killings aren’t over and that just about everybody we know is a possible slabsitter.”
“Yeah, you right, Marîd,” said Chiri in a soft voice. “What the hell you think I should do?”
She had me there. As soon as I talked her into agreeing, she next wanted me to explain the logic the assassins were using. Hell, I’d wasted a lot of time running up and down looking for that, too. Anybody could get bumped, anytime, for any reason. Now when Chiriga asked for practical advice, all I could say was “Be careful.” It looked like you had two choices: you went about things just the same but with more eyes open, or you could go live on another continent just to be on the safe side. The latter is assuming you didn’t pick the wrong continent and walk right into the heart of the matter, or let it follow along with you.
So I shrugged and told her it looked like a gin and bingara kind of afternoon. She poured herself a big drink, poured me a double on the house, and we sat around and looked into each other’s unhappy eyes for a while. No kidding, no flirting, no mentioning the Honey Pílar moddy. I didn’t even look at her new girls, and Chiri and I were huddled together too closely for the others to barge in and say hello. When I killed my drink I took a glass of her tende—it was starting to taste better. The first time I’d tried it, it was like I’d bitten into the side of some animal that had died under a log a week ago. I stood up to go, but then some true tenderness that I wasn’t quick enough to hide made me touch Chiri’s scarred cheek and pat her hand. She flashed me a smile that was almost back to full strength. I got out of there before we both decided to retire to Free Kurdistan or somewhere.
Back at my apartment, Yasmin was working on being late to work. She had got up early that morning to drop her pain and suffering on me, so to get to Frenchy’s late she just about had to go back to sleep and start all over again. She gave me a drowsy smile from the mattress. “Hi,” she said in a small voice. I think she and the Half-Hajj were the only people in the city who weren’t completely terrified. Saied had his moddy to simulate courage, but Yasmin just had me. She was absolutely confident that I was going to protect her. That made her even dumber than Saied.
“Yasmin, look, I got a million things to do, and you’re going to have to stay at your own place for a few days, okay?”
She looked hurt again. “You don’t want me around?” Meaning: you got somebody else now?
“I don’t want you around because I’m a big, shiny target now. This apartment is going to be too dangerous for anybody. I don’t want you getting into the line of fire, understand?” She liked that better; it meant I still cared for her, the dizzy bitch. You have to keep telling them that every ten minutes or they think you’re sneaking out the back.
“Okay, Marîd. You want your keys back?”
I thought about that a second. “Yeah. That way I know where they are, I know somebody won’t lift them from you to get into my place.” She took them out of her purse and tossed them toward me. I scooped them up. She made going-to-work motions, and I told her twenty or thirty times that I loved her, that I’d be extra crafty and sly, and that I’d call her a couple times a day just to check in. She kissed me, took a quick glance at the time and gave a phony gasp, and hurried out the door. She’d have to pay Frenchy his big fifty again today.
As soon as Yasmin was gone, I started putting together what I had, and I soon saw how little that was. I didn’t want either of the freezers to pop me in my own house, so I needed a place to stay until I felt safe again. For the same reason, I wanted to look different on the street. I still had a lot of Papa’s money in my bank account, and the cash I’d just gotten from Hassan would let me move around with a little freedom and security. It never took me long to pack. I stuffed some things into a black nylon zipper bag, wrapped my case of special daddies in a T-shirt and put it on top, then zipped the bag and left my apartment. When I hit the sidewalk, I wondered if Allah would be pleased to let me come back to this place. I knew I was just worrying myself for no good reason, the way you keep pushing at a sore tooth. Jesus, what a nuisance it was, being desperate to stay alive.
I left the Budayeen and crossed the big avenue into a rather pricey collection of shops; these were more like boutiques than like the souks you’d expect. Tourists found just the souvenirs they were looking for here, despite the fact that most of the junk was made in other countries many thousands of miles away. There probably aren’t any native arts and crafts in the city at all, so the tourists browsed happily through gaily colored straw parrots from Mexico and plastic folding fans from Kowloon. The tourists didn’t care, so nobody had any kick coming. We were all very civilized out here on the edge of the desert.
I went into a men’s clothing store that sold European business suits. Usually I didn’t have the money to buy half a pair of socks, but Papa was staking me to a whole new look. It was so different, I didn’t even know what I needed to get. The clerk gave me the fish-eye. I let him know I was serious—sometimes fellahin go into these shops just to get their sweat all over the Oxford suits. I told him I wanted to be outfitted completely from the ground up, I told him how much I was willing to spend, and let him put the wardrobe together. I didn’t know how to match shirts and ties—I didn’t know how to tie a tie, I got a printed brochure about different knots—so I really needed the clerk’s help. I figured he was getting a commission, so I let him oversell me by a couple of hundred kiam or so. He wasn’t just putting on an act about being friendly, the way most shopkeepers do. He didn’t even shrink away from touching me, and I was about as scruffy then as you could get. In the Budayeen alone, that takes in a wide range of shabbiness.
I paid for the clothes, thanked the clerk, and carried my packages a couple of blocks to the Hotel Palazzo di Marco Aurelio. It was part of a large international Swiss-owned chain: all of them looked alike, and none of them had any of the elegance that had made the original so charming. I didn’t care. I wasn’t looking for elegance or charm, I was looking for a place to sleep where no one would sizzle me in the night. I wasn’t even curious enough to ask why the hotel in this Islamic stronghold was named after some Roman son of a bitch.
The guy at the desk didn’t have the attitude of the salesman at the clothing store; I knew immediately that the room clerk was a snob, that he was paid to be a snob, that the hotel had trained him to raise his natural snobbery to ethereal heights. There was nothing I could say to crack his contempt; he was as set in his ways as a sidewalk. There was something I could do, though, and I did it. I took out all the money I had with me and spread it out on the pink marble counter. I told him I needed a good single room for a week or two, and I’d pay in cash in advance.
His expression didn’t change—he still hated my guts—but he called over an assistant and instructed him to find me a room. It didn’t take long. I carried my own packages up in an elevator and dumped them on the bed in my room. It was a nice room, I guess, with a good view of the back ends of some buildings in the business district. I had my own holo set, though, and a tub instead of just a shower. I emptied the zipper bag onto the bed, too, and changed into my Arab costume. It was time to pay another call on Herr Lutz Seipolt. This time I took a few daddies along with me. Seipolt was a shrewd man, and his boy Reinhardt might give me problems. I chipped in a German-language daddy and took along some of the body-and-mind controls. From now on I was only going to be a blur to normal people. I didn’t plan to hang around anywhere long enough for someone to draw a bead on me. Marîd Audran, the superman of the sands.
Bill was sitting in his beat-up old taxi, and I got in beside him on the front seat. He didn’t notice me. He was waiting for orders from the inside, as usual. I called his name and shoved his shoulder for almost a minute before he turned and blinked at me. “Yeah?” he said.
“Bill, will you take me out to Lutz Seipolt’s place?”
“I know you?”
“Uh huh. We went out there a few weeks ago.”
“That’s easy for you to say. Seipolt, huh? The German guy with the thing for blondes with legs? I can tell you right now, you’re not his type at all.”
Seipolt had told me he didn’t have a thing for anybody anymore. My God, Seipolt had lied to me, too; I tell you, I was shocked. I sat back and watched the city scream by the car as Bill forced his way through it. He always made the trip a little more difficult than it had to be. Of course, he was avoiding things in the road most people can’t even see, and he did it well, too. I don’t think he smacked a single afrit all the way out to Seipolt’s.
I got out of the cab and walked slowly to Seipolt’s massive wooden door. I knocked and rang the bell and waited, but no one came. I started to go around the house, hoping to run into the old fellah caretaker I’d met the first rime I’d come out here. The grass was lush and the plants and flowers ticked along on their botanical timetables. I heard the chirping of birds high in a tree, a rare enough sound in the city, but I didn’t hear anything that might mean the presence of people in the estate. Maybe Seipolt had gone to the beach. Maybe Seipolt had gone shopping for brass storks in the medinah. Maybe Seipolt and blue-eyed Reinhardt had taken the afternoon and evening off to make the rounds of the city’s hot spots, dining and dancing under the moon and stars.
Around the big house to the right, between two tall palmettos, was a side door set into the whitewashed wall. I didn’t think Seipolt ever used it; it looked like a convenience for whoever had to carry the groceries in and the garbage out. This side of the house was landscaped with aloes and yucca and flowering cactus, different from the front of the villa and its tropical rain-forest blossoms. I grabbed the doorknob, and it turned in my hand. Somebody had probably just gone into town for the newspaper. I let myself in and found myself looking down a flight of stairs into an arid darkness, and up a shorter flight into a pantry. I went up, through the pantry, through a well-equipped and gleaming kitchen, and into an elaborate dining room. I didn’t see anyone or hear anyone. I made a little noise to let Seipolt or Reinhardt know I was there; I wouldn’t want them to shoot me down, thinking I was spying or something.
From the dining room I passed through a parlor and down a corridor to Seipolt’s collection of ancient artifacts. I was on familiar ground now. Seipolt’s office was just . . . over . . .
. . . there. The door was closed, so I crossed to it and rapped on it loudly. I waited and rapped again. Nothing. I opened the door and stepped into Seipolt’s office. It was dim; the drapes were closed across the window. The air was stifling and stale, as if the air-conditioning wasn’t working and the room had been shut up for a while. I wondered if I dared go through the stuff on Seipott’s desk. I went up to it and riffled quickly through some reports on the top of a stack of papers.
Seipolt lay in a kind of alcove formed by the bay window behind his desk and two file cabinets against the left-hand wall. He was wearing a dark suit, stained darker now with blood, and when I first glanced over the desktop I thought he was a charcoal-gray throw rug on the light brown carpet. Then I saw a bit of his pale blue shirt and one hand. I took a few steps toward him, not really interested in seeing just how badly cut to pieces he was. His chest was opened from his throat to his groin, and a couple of dark, bloody things were spilled out on the carpet. One of his own internal organs had been crammed into his other stiff hand.
Xarghis Moghadhil Khan had done this. That is to say, James Bond, who worked for Seipolt. Until just recently. Another witness and lead obliterated.
I found Reinhardt in his own upstairs suite, in the same shape. The nameless old Arab had been murdered on the lawn in back of the house, as he worked among the lovely flowers he nurtured in defiance of nature and climate. All had been killed quickly, then dismembered. Khan had crept from one victim to the next, killing fast and quiet. He moved more silently than a ghost. Before I went back into the house, I chipped in a few daddies that suppressed fear, pain, anger, hunger, and thirst; the German daddy was already in place, but it looked as if it wouldn’t be very useful this afternoon.
I headed toward Seipolt’s office. I intended to go back in there and search through the desk. Before I got to the room, though, someone called out to me. “Lutz?”
I turned to look. It was the blonde with the legs.
“Lutz?” she asked. “Bist du noch bereit?”
“Ich heisse Marîd Audran, Fraulein. Wissen Sie wo Lutz ist?” At that point my brain swallowed the German add-on whole; it wasn’t as if I could just translate the German into Arabic, but as if I was speaking a language I’d known since early childhood.
“Isn’t he down here?” she asked.
“No, and I can’t find Reinhardt either.”
“They must have gone into the city. They were saying something about that over lunch.”
“I’ll bet they’ve gone to my hotel. We had a dinner engagement, and I understood that I was to meet him here, I hired a car all the way out here. What a damn stupid thing. I guess I’ll just give the hotel a ring and leave a message for Lutz, and then call another taxi. Would you like to come along?”
She bit her thumbnail. “I don’t know if I should,” she said.
“Have you seen the city yet?”
She frowned. “I haven’t seen anything but this house since I’ve been here,” she said grumpily.
I nodded. “That’s how he is, he drives himself too hard. He always says he’ll take it easy and enjoy himself, but he works himself and he works everybody around him. I don’t want to say anything against him—after all, he’s one of my oldest business associates and dearest friends—but I think it’s bad for him to keep going the way he does. Am I right?”
“That’s just what I tell him,” she said.
“Then why don’t we go back to the hotel? Maybe once we’re there together, the four of us, we’ll get him to relax a little tonight. Dinner and a show, as my guests. I insist.”
She smiled. “Just let me—”
“We must hurry,” I said. “If we don’t get back quickly, Lutz will turn around and come back here. He’s an impatient man. Then I’ll have to make still another trip out here. It’s an awful ride you know. Come along, we don’t have any time to spare.”
“But if we’re going out to dinner—”
I should have guessed. “I think that dress suits you perfectly, my dear; but if you prefer, why, I beg that you allow me to accommodate you with another outfit of your choice, and whatever accessories you feel are necessary. Lutz has given me many gifts over the years. It would give me great pleasure to acknowledge his generosity in this small way. We can go shopping before dinner. I know several very exclusive English, French, and Italian shops. I’m sure you’d enjoy that. Indeed, you might choose your garments for the evening while Lutz and I take care of our little business. It will all work out beautifully.”
I had her by the arm and out the front door. We were walking up the gravel drive to Bill’s taxi. I opened one of the car’s rear doors and helped her in, then I walked around the back of the cab and got in the other side. “Bill,” I said in Arabic, “back to the city. The Hotel Palazzo di Marco Aurelio.”
Bill looked at me sourly. “Marcus Aurelius is dead, too, you know,” he said as he started up the taxi. I got a frosty feeling wondering what he meant by “too.”
I turned to the beautiful woman beside me. “Pay no attention to the driver,” I said in German. “Like all Americans, he is mad. It is the will of Allah.”
“You didn’t phone the hotel,” she said, giving me a sweet smile. She liked the idea of a new suit of clothes and jewelry just because we were going to dinner. I was just a crazy Arab with too much money. She liked crazy Arabs, I just knew it.
“No, I didn’t. I’ll have to call as soon as we get there.”
She wrinkled up her nose in. thought. “But if we’re there—”
“You don’t understand,” I told her. “For the common run of guests, the desk clerk is capable of handling matters like this. But when the guests are, shall we say, special—like Herr Seipolt or myself—then one must speak directly with the manager.”
Her eyes got bigger. “Oh,” she said.
I looked back at the freshly watered garden that Seipolt’s money had imposed on the very edge of the creeping dunes. In a couple of weeks, that place would look as dry and dead as the middle of the Empty Quarter. I turned to my companion and smiled easily. We chatted all the way back to the city.