Jon Courtenay Grimwood - Arabesk 3 - Felaheen

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FELAHEEN
Arabesk Book 03
Jon Courtenay Grimwood
CONTENTS
Title Page
Dedication
Epigraphs
Prologue
PART ONE
CHAPTER 1
CHAPTER 2
CHAPTER 3
CHAPTER 4
CHAPTER 5
CHAPTER 6
CHAPTER 7
CHAPTER 8
CHAPTER 9
CHAPTER 10
CHAPTER 11
CHAPTER 12
CHAPTER 13
CHAPTER 14
CHAPTER 15
CHAPTER 16
CHAPTER 17
CHAPTER 18
CHAPTER 19
CHAPTER 20
CHAPTER 21
CHAPTER 22
CHAPTER 23
CHAPTER 24
CHAPTER 25
CHAPTER 26
CHAPTER 27
CHAPTER 28
CHAPTER 29
CHAPTER 30
CHAPTER 31
PART TWO
CHAPTER 32
CHAPTER 33
CHAPTER 34
CHAPTER 35
CHAPTER 36
CHAPTER 37
CHAPTER 38
CHAPTER 39
CHAPTER 40
CHAPTER 41
CHAPTER 42
CHAPTER 43
CHAPTER 44
CHAPTER 45
CHAPTER 46
CHAPTER 47
CHAPTER 48
CHAPTER 49
CHAPTER 50
CHAPTER 51
CHAPTER 52
CHAPTER 53
CHAPTER 54
Acknowledgements
About the Author
A lso by Jon Courtenay Grimwood
Get ready for Jon Courtenay Grimwood's Stamping Butterflies
Copyright Page
For Jamie CG, Sam B and for my father, who has lived many of the things I only write about.
I owe you all, as ever . . .
"Since the prince needs to play the animal he chooses among the beasts the fox and the lion,
because the lion cannot protect itself from snares and the fox cannot protect itself from wolves.
Therefore the prince must be a fox to recognize traps and a lion to frighten the wolves."
--Machiavelli
"If a lion could speak, we could not understand him . . ."
--Ludwig Wittgenstein
"Unlike foxes."
--Tiri
PROLOGUE
Monday 14th March
"Dig," said the fox.
So Ashraf Bey dug. Fingers bleeding and grit compacted beneath his broken nails. With only their sticky
rawness to persuade him that he was still in the world of the living.
"Dig harder."
So he did that too. Handful after handful of coarse salt tumbling into his face, blinding his eyes and filling
his mouth, half-open to drag oxygen from dead, fetid air. The voice in his head had promised to help Raf
reach the surface but only if he obeyed every order without argument. Foxes were good at digging their
way out of traps apparently.
Raf's biggest problem before he got buried alive was that no one had told him how far his authority went
as the new Chief of Police for Tunis, so he'd decided to assume it went as far as he wanted; which was
how he'd ended up . . .
"Like this, really."
Raf wasn't too worried about talking to an animal that didn't exist. For a start he had a number of
hallucinogens infecting his bloodstream, from an acid/ketamine mix to a particularly virulent grade of
skunk. And besides, he knew Tiri was just an illusion.
They'd been through this. It was sorted out.
According to Tiri a thousand camels once fell through the crust of Ifriqiya's great salt lake, lashed to each
other in a baggage train. With the beasts went their cargo of dates, the master of the caravanserai and
those who led the animals. Only one man survived, a slave who was driven into the desert for lying. His
untrustworthy testimony had been that nothing existed below the ground over which they'd walked but
void. What he'd thought was endlessly real was no more solid than the skin of a drum or the shell of an
egg sucked dry by a snake.
"So you see,"said the fox, "things are . . ."
". . . Never what they seem." Raf punched one fist through earth to reach air. "So you keep telling me."
Later, when he had dry-vomited fear from his belly, wiped dirt and tears from his face and come to terms
with the fact that a surprisingly small hole in the ground near his feet represented victory over death,
Ashraf Bey came to a deeper realization.
He stank.
There was no doubt about it. Rancid sweat and the smell of excrement rose like heat from his body. And
with it came the stink of the grave. A sour, lingering foulness that varnished his nakedness, clogging the
inside of his nostrils and infesting even the shafts of his blond hair.
Maybe it was this smell that drew the ghosts or perhaps the drugs in his blood cleared Raf's eyes to let
him glimpse inside the egg. Whatever, when he set out across Chott el Jerid the ghosts went with him.
Strangers who looked vaguely familiar. Some man he'd seen in a queue. A Chinese boy, both too vague
and strange to coalesce. Lady Jalila he recognized. Elegant in her sand-coloured silk jacket stretched
across ample breasts. Eyes made up, lips perfect, neck broken . . . She started to say something, then
went, her words and ghost ripped apart in a gust of night wind.
Then the fat man came.
Which was, Raf realized, probably inevitable. Of all the people he'd killed it was Felix Abrinsky who
mattered the most.
"You okay, blondie?"
Raf put one step doggedly in front of the other. Shaded his eyes from the sight and tried to pretend he
wasn't crying. "What do you think?" he said.
"You know how it goes," said Felix. "These days I don't have much of a brain for thinking." And with that
he limped away, dragging the foot that had been shattered half a year before, along with most of his skull,
in a bomb blast meant for the man he'd just been walking beside.
PART ONE
CHAPTER 1
____________
Tuesday 1st February
"Out of my way." Major Jalal jabbed his elbow into thekidney of one photographer and shouldered
another into the gutter, watching as frozen slush filled the man's scruffy shoes. Ten paces at most
separated the limo from the door of the casino but five photographers barred the way. Well, three now.
"Chill," his boss said with a broad smile. The major wasn't sure if that was an order or if His Excellency
was commenting on New York's weather. So Jalal kept his reply to a nod, which covered both bases.
"Prince . . ."
"Over here . . ."
His Excellency Kashif Pasha was used to catcalls and noise from nasrani paparazzi, who whistled at him
like he was someone's dog. It was the only thing he hated about coming to New York.
"Look this way."
Kashif Pasha made the mistake of doing just that and found himself staring into the smirking face of
Charlie Vanhie, a WASP reporter he'd had the misfortune to meet at least three times before.
"Tell us about your plan to throw a dinner to celebrate your parents' fiftieth wedding anniversary . . ."
Having made the mistake of looking at Charlie Vanhie, the pasha then compounded his error by actually
speaking to the man. "Forty-fifth," he corrected, "it will be their forty-fifth."
"What makes you think the Emir will turn up?"
Kashif Pasha stared at the man.
"Given that he won't even be in the same room as your mother. What was it he called her . . . ?"
Major Jalal began to move towards the speaker but His Excellency held up one hand. "Leave it," he told
the major. "Let me handle this."
Around the time Kashif Pasha stood on a snow-covered sidewalk in Manhattan, bathed in the light of a
flashgun, a small girl sat at a cheap plastic laptop. She was preparing to answer a long list of EQ
questions, most of them multiple choice.
Draped around the girl's neck was a grey kitten worn like a collar. Actually, Ifritah was almost six months
old but she still behaved like a kitten so that was how the girl thought of her.
Lady Hana al-Mansur, wrote the girl in a box marked name. Then she deleted it and typed Hani
instead. There was also a box for her age but this was more problematic since no one was quite sure.
She chose 10 , because either she was about to become ten, or she was ten already, in which case she'd
be eleven in less than a week.
In the box marked nationality Hani wrote Ottoman and when the software rejected this she wrote it
again. So then the computer offered her a long list of alternatives which she rejected, finally compromising
on Other .
The room where Hani sat was in a house five thousand five hundred and seven miles from New York. In
El Iskandryia. A city on the left-hand edge of the Nile Delta. Right at the top where the delta jutted out
into the Mediterranean.
The madersa looked in on itself in that way many North African houses do. It was old and near decrepit
in places. With a grand entrance onto Rue Sherrif at the front and an unmarked door that led out to an
alley at the rear.
Guarding this door was a porter named Khartoum, because the city of Khartoum was where he came
from and he'd refused to reveal any other. He smoked cigars backwards, with the lit end inside his mouth
and had given Hani a tiny silver hand on a thread of cotton to help her do well in the tests.
This impressed Hani greatly and it went, almost without saying, that Hani would rather have had
Khartoum with her than the cat but her uncle, the bey, had forbidden it. Not crossly. Just firmly. Because
the box containing the test stated that all computers were to be off-line and no other people were to be in
the room when the test was taken.
First off was an easy question about being caught in a plane crash. With her plane going down would she:
1) scribble her will on the back of an envelope; 2) offer her help to the pilot; 3) continue to read a
magazine?
The answer was obviously continue to read since, a) she'd never learned to fly and so offering help was
pointless and, b) she was unlikely to be carrying an envelope, had she had anything to leave anybody
which she didn't . . .
Next question was about her father/stepfather/legal other . Since Hani had never met the first, lacked
the second and was uncertain if her Uncle Ashraf counted as the third, she ignored it, as she did two
more questions about her family.
Then there was a section on school friends , which Hani didn't even bother to read. The final bit was the
simplest . . . Five hundred faces on a flat screen, each expressing anger or joy, happiness, boredom,
sadness or pain.
Her job was to name that emotion. The section started at a crawl and for the first twenty or so faces Hani
thought this was as fast as the software could go, but as impatience set in and Hani started hammering at
the keys, her screen became a blur and soon the small girl was selecting answers so fast her computer
had all its fans running.
She got every expression right except for five benchmark indicators where the picture was of her. Even
so, according to the EQ software, Hani's was the highest score ever recorded for that section, certainly
within the time.
The IQ test that followed was infinitely more difficult. So difficult in fact that Hani ran out of time on her
very first question. Which was the odd animal out--a sheep, a hen, a dog or a shark? Above each choice
was the small photograph, just in case she'd forgotten what the animals looked like.
As answers went, the shark seemed much too obvious. Especially given this was an intelligence test and
identifying the first three as air-breathing and the shark as a cartilaginous water dweller took no
intelligence at all.
So what else could it be? Sheep were actually domesticated goats. At least Hani was pretty sure they
were. Hens had also been domesticated, as had dogs, which were really domesticated wolves. So the
answer could be shark but for a less obvious reason, because humanity had no history of domesticating
sharks.
But what if that was still too obvious?
In the end she chose the sheep over the hen, dog and shark because it was a herbivore and all the others
ate meat. Although, in the case of the hen, Hani suspected that the bird was actually omnivorous. This
seemed the mostly likely of the nineteen possible answers she jotted onto a piece of scrap paper.
"So what went wrong?" her uncle asked later, when he finally tracked Hani down to the madersa's roof
where the girl sat oblivious to a cold glowering sky.
"With what?"
"Your second test. You only did one question and even then . . ." His voice trailed away.
"It wasn't the sheep?"
The thin man with the shades, goatee beard and drop-pearl earring shook his head.
"Which one was it?" Hani demanded.
"The shark."
"Because it's not domesticated?"
Ashraf al-Mansur, known also as Ashraf Bey, put his face in his hands and for a moment looked almost
ill. He had a niece half the city thought was retarded. A mistress who wasn't his mistress because they'd
never actually fucked. And his own life . . . Raf stopped, considering that point.
He'd recently resigned his job, the madersa cost more to run than he had coming in and yet, between
them, Hani and Zara were worth millions. He was being chased for debts while living in a house with two
of North Africa's wealthiest people, either of whom would give him the money, if only he'd stop refusing
to consider it. As Zara said, getting that to make sense was like trying to fasten jeans with a zip one side
and buttonholes the other.
Hani sat her test again next morning. This time on the flat roof of the al-Mansur madersa. And she did
exactly what her uncle suggested, which was give the most obvious answer to everything. It took her less
than fifteen minutes to achieve a score higher than the software could handle.
CHAPTER 2
____________
Tuesday 1st February
Everything about Manhattan was white, from the sidewalkbeneath Major Jalal's boots to the static
in his Sony earbead that told the major his boss was off-line again. White streets, white cars, white
noise--one way or another snow was responsible for the lot. Well, maybe not the white noise.
Five hours earlier, the windchill along Fifth Avenue had been enough to make grown men cry but now the
wind was gone, snow fluttered down between the Knox building and Lane Bryant like feathers from a
ruptured pillow and the avenue ahead of him was as empty as the major's crocodile-skin wallet.
While his boss sat snug in Casino 30/54 losing sums of money the major could barely imagine, Major
Jalal had been down to Mount Olive trying to bribe his way into the private room of Charlie Vanhie, the
Boston photographer currently being wired for a broken jaw.
The contents of his wallet had gone to the pocket of a porter who took the lot and never came back.
And then, when the major gave up in disgust, six sour-faced paparazzi appeared out of nowhere to grab
frantic shots of him leaving the hospital, in the mistaken belief that the quietly dressed, moustachioed
aide-de-camp was his Armani-clad, elegantly bearded boss. The major just hoped His Excellency was
having a better night of it.
Unfortunately, Kashif Pasha wasn't.
Although the casino was in New York and His Excellency came from Ifriqiya, the roulette wheel at which
he played originated in Paris. This ensured it had only one nonpaying number rather than the zero and
double zero found on US tables. It was French because Kashif Pasha placed bets so high he could
dictate the choice of wheel, thus limiting the edge allowed to the house. But for all this Kashif Pasha was
still losing. (A situation drearily familiar to his aged mother, the Lady Maryam, his father and his bankers.)
"Excellency . . ."
Looking up, Kashif Pasha was in time to see an apologetic croupier lean forward and rake ten scarlet
chips from the grid. So busy had he been listening to the dying clatter of the ivory ball that he'd forgotten
to check on which number it landed. To Kashif's ear that unmistakable, addictive clicking was pitched
somewhere between an old man's death rattle and the tapping of an infestation of wood beetle.
Both of which reminded him of home.
"You there." Kashif Pasha tried to snap his fingers and winced, making do with a quick wave of his
injured hand. The effect was identical. A young black woman in a short deerskin skirt hurried forward, a
box of cigars open on her silver tray. Her legs were bare, her breasts laced into a tan waistcoat that
otherwise gaped down the front. A badge shaped like a feather announced her as Michelle.
"Sir . . ." The waitress waited for the well-dressed foreigner to select a Monte Cristo and take the
matches she offered. Something Kashif Pasha did without appearing to notice the bitten nails of his own
hands, which spoke of long nights and too little sleep.
Embossed on the matchbox was a tomahawk. The casino's designer had no idea if Mohawk Indians
actually fought with hand axes or, indeed, if any Native Americans had ever used such weapons, but
tomahawk sounded like Mohawk and 30 West 54th Street was Mohawk land.
Before it became such, the land on which Casino 30/54 sat belonged to Clack Associates, owners of a
small hotel much loved by rich European tourists. Augustus Clack III sold the hotel for an undisclosed
sum to the billionaire financier, Benjamin Agadir, who promptly swapped it with the Mohawks for seven
glass necklaces and a blanket. Since federal regulations specifically allowed casinos to be opened on
reservations or any Indian land held in trust, this neatly circumvented the state law that banned the
establishment of casinos in New York City.
"Faites vos jeux,"announced the croupier, as if inviting a whole table of high rollers to place their bets
rather than just the one.
Kashif Pasha ignored the man.
Striking a match, the eldest son and current heir to the Emir of Tunis lifted the match to the tip of his cigar
and sucked. His mother disapproved of smoking, gambling, whores and alcohol but since cigars were not
expressly mentioned in the Holy Quran, she sometimes kept her peace. Besides, Kashif Pasha was in
New York City and she was not.
Quite what Lady Maryam would have made of the striking murals in the gentlemen's lavatory it was best
not to imagine. Kashif Pasha's favourite by far featured Pocahontas undergoing what Americans called
double entry. For what were undoubtedly good cultural reasons, her lovers both sported tails, the back
legs of goats, and small horns.
At home there were no paintings in Lady Maryam's wing of the Bardo and no statues. Even his
great-grandfather's famous Neue Sachlichkeit collection of oils had been banished, saved only by the
Emir's flat refusal to have them destroyed.
Representative art was abhorrent to his mother for usurping the rights of God. But then this was a woman
who found even calligraphy suspect. Which, undoubtedly went some way to explaining why she'd burned
the present his father sent her at Kashif's birth. (An Osmanli miniature from the sixteenth century showing
the Prophet's wet nurse Hamina breast-feeding.) And this, in turn, maybe helped explain why Emir
Moncef had refused to see his wife since.
Kashif Pasha smiled darkly, his favourite expression, and pushed five ivory chips onto the number
thirteen.
" Rien ne va plus,"announced the croupier, as if he hadn't been waiting. No more bets were to be made.
There was a ritual to go through, even though the room was almost empty and the roulette table reserved
for Kashif Pasha. The wheel spun one way and the ivory ball was sent tumbling another and when a
number other than thirteen came up, Kashif Pasha just shrugged, carelessly he hoped.
Over the course of the next hour the rampart of counters in front of him became a single turret, then little
more than ruined foundations and finally almost disappeared, leaving Kashif Pasha with only six ivory
chips.
The casino would keep the table open for him while Kashif Pasha ordered more counters, that much was
given. High rollers like His Excellency got what they wanted. Their own suites, complimentary meals,
limousines to and from the airport. Even use of the casino's own plane if necessary. And what he wanted
now was a break.
"Okay," said Kashif Pasha. "I'll be back here at . . ." He glanced at his Rolex and added two hours to the
time it was. "At seven," he said. "Have the table reset. New wheel, new ball, new grid, new stack of
counters." Which was what his croupier seemed to call those hundred-thousand-dollar red chips.
Sliding his six remaining counters across the table, His Excellency smiled. "For you," he said and watched
the croupier blink. It was a good tip, more so since Kashif Pasha was sometimes known not to tip at all.
The croupier would give half to the house, but that still left more than he earned in six months.
"Thank you, Excellency," said the man, moving aside to make room for a crop-haired woman who'd
been watching the game from a discreet distance.
"Your Highness." This was a title Kashif Pasha didn't warrant but Georgian van Broglie used it anyway.
So far she'd acted as facilitator on every visit Kashif Pasha made to Casino 30/54 and he had yet to
complain about the social upgrade. "Shall I have the kitchen organize some supper?"
She took his silence as assent.
"Chicken breast," she suggested, "on focaccia, with honey and mustard sauce. A litre of Evian and maybe
some more ginger ale?" She nodded to a line of small and empty bottles of Canada Dry, the plastic
screw-top kind.
Kashif Pasha's usual order. A glorified chicken sandwich washed down with three plastic flasks of
champagne. Quite why a forty-four-year-old North African playboy would want to drink Veuve Clicquot
from an empty Canada Dry bottle Georgian van Broglie didn't know, but then she'd never met Lady
Maryam.
"Does Your Highness require anything else?"
She saw the man glance across the room to the deerskinned waitress who'd brought him his cigar. "No
possible," she muttered apologetically. "House rules. I'd love to make an exception but . . ."
Kashif Pasha sighed. "Send up something similar," he said crossly. "After you've found me the house
doctor." He checked his knuckles, which were looking more lopsided than ever. "And get room service
to bring me a bucket of ice."
CHAPTER 3
____________
Wednesday 2nd February
"Nicolai . . ." Emir Moncef's call was for his bodyguard. Asmall and intense Uzbek whose name
was probably something completely different. The Uzbek and a Tajik called Alex took turns to protect
the Emir. They were a recent birthday present from the Soviet ambassador. One Moncef had not known
how to refuse.
He called again, just in case either guard was within hearing, then turned his attention back to the snake.
Death was always going to come. That it chose to manifest as a slithering viper was unexpected but not
摘要：

FELAHEENArabeskBook03JonCourtenayGrimwoodCONTENTSTitlePageDedicationEpigraphsProloguePARTONECHAPTER1CHAPTER2CHAPTER3CHAPTER4CHAPTER5CHAPTER6CHAPTER7CHAPTER8CHAPTER9CHAPTER10CHAPTER11CHAPTER12CHAPTER13CHAPTER14CHAPTER15CHAPTER16CHAPTER17CHAPTER18CHAPTER19CHAPTER20CHAPTER21CHAPTER22CHAPTER23CHAPTER24C...

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