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But she threw out the hook all the same.
"Your father's rich."
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"If he is my father . . ."
Eugenie sighed. "Believe me," she said heavily and pushed the envelope across
the table. "He is and you are an al-Mansur."
"Just suppose," said Raf, pushing it back, "that really were true. Why would I
be interested?"
"What if I told you he wants to disinherit
His Excellency
Kashif Pasha?" Eugenie said, her words curdling around the honorific. "And
that his favourite son is too young to command support of the army.
And that without the support of the army Murad can't be appointed the Emir's
new heir?"
Raf looked blank.
"That leaves you," she said. "Doesn't that make you feel like coming to his
aid?"
At the shake of Raf's head, Eugenie shrugged. "I told him this wouldn't work,"
she said, but she was talking to herself.
"I've got a question for you," said Raf. "Ignore whether or not they were
actually married. Did my mother really sleep with the Emir?"
Eugenie nodded.
"Can you prove it?"
They met again the next morning, Raf already one newspaper down with two to go
by the time Eugenie stepped over the silk rope that separated the terrace of
Le Trianon from Rue Missala.
The weather was warmer, almost humid, but Raf wore his black silk suit all the
same and she wore the grey skirt and jacket she'd been wearing when the two of
them first met, only now they no longer stank of camphor. A discreet holster
still sat at the back of her hip. Her makeup remained so immaculate that
Raf wasn't quite sure it was there.
As ever, Raf wore his trademark shades and nursed a headache that was three
parts caffeine to one part ennui. He'd been waiting for Eugenie's arrival.
Which was not to say he'd been looking forward to it.
"Cappuccino," Raf told his waiter. "And whatever Lady Eugenie is having."
"Madame de la Croix," Eugenie said firmly. "And I'll have my usual espresso .
. . I turned down your father's kind offer of an upgrade before you were
born," she added, once the waiter had gone. "Around the time I turned down his
offer of a bed to share. My chance for immortality was how he described it."
The woman's smile was so wintry that Raf looked at her then, really looked,
the way the fox did when searching for stillness within life's scribble.
It was said, at least it was by Tiri, that a full-grown seal was able to sense
the wake of a single fish ten minutes after that area of water had become
empty. So too could people sense the ghost echo of long-gone events.
If only they knew how.
Looking at Eugenie, really looking, Raf saw a courage unusual for the world in
which they lived. Not in the small holster casually clipped to her belt or in
the steadiness of her gaze and her refusal to be the first to look away. Her
courage showed most in the way she wore her hair, long and unashamedly grey.
The woman was old and made no pretence to be anything other.
A strength that gave her a crueller kind of beauty.
"Your mother . . ." Eugenie said once the waiter had brought the coffee.
"What about her?"
"Can you still recall what she was like?"
Raf lifted his shades, though to do so hurt because even with clouds to filter
out the sun his pupils were reduced to tiny, steel-hard dots. "Total recall,"
he told Eugenie coldly. "That's what I've got."
"About her?"
"About everything . . ."
Eugenie nodded, like that made sense and she didn't feel it necessary to
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challenge what he said or have him justify the statement. "Yeah," she said, "I
suppose you do."
They sat in silence after that. Raf hidden again behind his shades and Eugenie
openly watching the occasional tourist couple stroll hand in hand down Rue
Missala. It was too early for the Easter crowd, too late for those who'd come
over New Year. The hotels were cheap, the cafés mostly empty. Out of the
dozens of horse-drawn calèches that usually plied the Corniche, that great
sweep of seafront stretching from Fort Qaitbey down to where the fat seawall
of the Silsileh sat in the shadow of
Iskandryia's bibliotheka
, only a handful were working and those had their leather roofs up, their
drivers wrapped in coats against the chance of rain.
"Do you like it here?"
"Yes," Raf answered immediately, leaving himself wondering if he actually
meant it. In many ways Seattle had been better and Huntsville had a certain
charm, even though it had been a prison. "Mostly," he said, amending his
answer.
"And you intend to stay?" Eugenie's smile was part knowing but mostly sad, as
if she had reasons for doubting it, reasons she wasn't entirely sure Raf was
yet ready to hear. Her attitude irritated the fuck out of him.
"What do you actually want?" Raf demanded.
"Help," said Eugenie, "pure and simple. Your help protecting the Emir."
"I thought that was your job?"
For a split second Eugenie's face glazed, the way faces do when people retreat
inside their head. "I'm getting old," was all she said. "The Emir doesn't
listen to me like he did and I know he would listen to you."
Reaching across the table, she took Raf's hand, oblivious to the waiters
hovering and German tourists on the far side of the rope that separated Le
Trianon's terrace from the street. She had a surprisingly hard grip for a
woman her age.
"I knew her, you know . . ." said Eugenie. "Right back at the beginning." She
was talking about his mother.
"What was she like?" Raf's question came unbidden, sliding its way into being
before Raf had time to snatch it back.
"Beautiful," Eugenie said simply. "Fractured even then. Wild as an animal and
as dangerous. She was wanted, you know . . ."
"Wanted?"
"By the FBI and Interpol. I think even the Japanese had a warrant out.
Something about a bomb in a research vessel."
"What kind of research?"
"The kind that turned minke whales into sushi."
Despite himself Raf smiled. "How did the two of you meet?"
"Oh," Eugenie's mouth twisted. "I was there when she first arrived at the
labs. Stupid bitch came trawling out of the desert in a battered Jeep, I
almost shot her . . . Should have done," she added softly. "Might have made
life a whole lot easier for the rest of us."
Raf wasn't sure he was meant to hear that bit.
CHAPTER 11
_____________
Flashback
"What you thinking?" Atal asked, slamming the door on Singh's yellow taxi.
"About our friend Wu Yung," said Sally. "About the islands."
Atal blushed and they both knew why.
As light began fingering the palms that edged the beach, Sally had splashed
her way onto the sand and stopped to retrieve her sarong, wrapping
red-and-white dragons loosely round her narrow hips, then padded her way along
a winding path between rampant bushes of sea almond and wild orchids until she
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reached the kampong.
At the entrance of her hut Sally stopped again to kick white sand from her
heels and, glancing across the kampong saw Wu Yung leave a house on stilts [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]