Lacking shoes, history, a voice.

For most of those who joined Khartoum, Raf’s escort were invisible. Although at least one man did hesitate, seeing uniforms lit from an open door. And two or three slunk back into darkness and safety.

A few of the men smiled at Khartoum, most just nodded a simple marhaba. One or two, mainly the older ones, gave the salaam, right hands sweeping up to touch their heart and then that little finger-flick out from the head. To those alone Khartoum replied formally, wa ‘alaykum assalam.

One of the smallest boys reached out to touch Khartoum’s robe and was instantly yanked away by his father. Khartoum appeared not to hear the slap that followed or the muffled protests that followed that. In total there were no more than fifty people, all men and mostly young.

Occasionally, when light spilled out from a high window some of them would stare at Raf when they thought he wouldn’t notice. Mostly they just trudged in silence, until the narrow cut ended, opening onto a gloomy scar of scrubland and railway track.

Away to their right, arc lights bathed the vast neobaroque business that was Misr Station, its exuberance curtailed only by distance and intervening darkness. And somewhere nearby was a truck depot, where a diesel crunched its gears, but other than this, the only sound was of feet shuffling over gravel as the group left the tracks behind to slip through a hole cut in a link fence.

An unbroken line of blank-faced, five-storey tenements faced them across a deserted road, all that separated them from a small zawiya built in the courtyard of the tenement opposite. The zawiya ’s minaret was little more than a squat tower. And Khartoum’s voice, when it echoed from the top, was thin and quavering against the amplified magnificence coming from grander minarets across the waking city.

The small mosque looked out of place but that was just appearance, reality was the other way round. The mosque had been there first. Once, in fact, it had been a Coptic church, home to a famous Gnostic, but that was before the armies of God burst out of the desert, bringing blood, coffee, decent cooking and the truth.

“In the name of God, the Merciful, the Compassionate . . .”

The Fatiha gave way to other prayers, then a Bible story that Raf didn’t recognize from Sunday services at school. One in which Satan was cast out for refusing to bow down before Adam and in which Adam repented of eating the Apple.

Original sin did not exist.

Vicarious atonement was not required.

To find the law, logic had only to be systematically applied to situations not explicitly mentioned in the Holy Quran . . . Hadith and Ijma’. Raf pulled the terms from memory and meaning came tumbling after. Hadith was a database of oral law, second only to the Book and more important than Ijma ’ , agreed precedents. Together, with logic, they made up the four classical roots of jurisprudence, which all rulers must use . . .

Hunched on his heels at the back of the crowd, Raf understood instantly why he’d been brought. Why Khartoum was so insistent.

Raf dragged his eyes away from the cracked dome overhead with its constellation of tesserae broken by the tiny darkness of fallen stars. Stained glass filled with morning light at one end of the mosque and below the window was a wooden minbar, a kind of carved pulpit in which Khartoum now stood. To one side was a niche, richly decorated with polychrome marble and painted tiles. At the top of the niche were carved stones of alternate colours, dark red and pale sandstone. It was an ancient technique known as . . .

Ablaq, Raf said to himself.

Next to him, a middle-aged man frowned, suddenly recognized Raf as the new governor and looked hurriedly away.

“This is the truth.”

Now Khartoum sat facing the crowd, telling them the story of a famous mystic who challenged a Caliph and was crucified, his ashes thrown into the Tigris. Somehow the tale of al-Hallaj developed into one about a mullah who rode his donkey backward, waving a lighter and a mug of water. When asked why, he announced that it was to ignite heaven and put out the flames of hell.

After that the stories became lighter. The poor mullah and the rich beggar. The night the mullah fell down a well. The time he announced, when presented with a pregnant woman, whose husband had died falling off a cart five years before, that the fault lay with the lazy foetus who’d been sleeping, not the mother. And then, while the men were still thinking about that, the stories ended . . .

“They are the city,” Khartoum said to Raf later. “You forget this at your peril. And besides”—he smiled—“what’s that phrase nasranis have . . . ? Seeing is believing. . .”

“You wanted me to believe in them?”

Khartoum looked at Raf as if he was a complete idiot. “No,” he said heavily, “I want them to believe in you.”

She wasn’t the first person to decide that Raf had engineered the departure of Koenig Pasha . . . Dr. Kamila was just more obvious about her suspicions than most.

“A poison-induced heart attack?” Raf raised his eyebrows. “Who said anything about a heart attack?”

“The local news. Were they wrong?” Kamila kept her tone several degrees below comfortable. One degree above the autopsy suite.

“Yes,” said Raf, “undoubtedly . . . For a start, to have a heart attack you need a heart.”

Behind him a man snorted, but when Raf glanced round the General’s old bodyguard, Hakim, was busy staring straight ahead.

“I’ll be with you when this is done,” Kamila said stiffly and returned to her scalpel and a plump woman largely hidden under a green sheet.

It was three months since Raf had been in Kamila’s autopsy suite. Then there’d been two bodies, one of them a stranger unrelated to his own narrative, the other the woman he was meant to have murdered. Now there were half a dozen. In El Iskandryia these days, even death was suffering from inflation.

“That man I sent . . .”

“In a minute,” said Kamila crossly, turning back to where the plump woman’s scalp had been sliced around the hairline and pulled forward, so it hid her face. A section of yellow bone beneath had been cut away. Whatever was in the stainless-steel dish beside the half-empty skull might look like minced jelly but was, Raf decided, undoubtedly something nastier.

“Now,” said Raf.

“As soon as this is finished.”

Raf clicked his fingers and pointed to the electric scalpel. “Take that toy away from Ms. Kamila.”

“Sure, Boss.” Hakim squeezed between two trolleys and held out a meaty hand. “If you would, miss . . .”

Very carefully, Kamila put the bowl and her scalpel on the nearest table, the double clink of metal on metal momentarily drowning out Raf’s sigh. She obviously hadn’t forgiven him the last time they’d met.

“The scalpel . . .” Hakim’s hand was still outstretched.

“Let it go,” said Raf and the sergeant padded silently back to his place. Ahmed, Raf’s other bodyguard, waited at ground level, at the top of the stairs. In the street outside, his official driver stood by the Bentley. It seemed that the only place Raf was to be free of guards was on the loo. And even that had been a battle.

At the mansion itself, he had anxious secretaries, keen assistants, more staff than hours in the day and all awaiting orders, with only Hani willing to disagree with him if she thought his ideas were bad. Raf seriously doubted if an idiot supported by a nine-year-old was what the General had in mind when he resigned and appointed Raf in his place. So far, it seemed, his greatest successes had come from doing nothing . . . Zero-input shadow play.