“That’s one of Hani’s tales?”

“No,” the old man had said. “Not yet . . .”

Raf watched in fascination as the old man lowered his heavy tray carefully onto the table. A small gilt jug was accompanied by two tiny gilt cups, a Limoges platter of rosewater Turkish delight, dusted with sugar, and a smaller plate, piled high with tiny crescents of pastry. An open cigarette box, made from beaten silver but lined with rosewood, was filled with Balkan cigarillos.

“I trust Your Excellency needs nothing.” Khartoum gave the tiniest bow and walked backward from the chamber, as if he’d been a majordomo all his life.

Coffee, tiny croissants, Turkish delight. . . Limoges dishes and an English silver tray. Somewhere in there, sure as mathematical certainty, was an answer to their sum. Concentrate, the fox would have said. So Raf did, starting with the nothing that Khartoum considered he needed.

Zero had been an Arabic understanding. The nasrani who came with their heavy mail and what passed for cooking grasped the numerical concept of something plus something, but zero, the addition, subtraction and definition of nothing, had to be explained.

The French, the English, the Germans, now the Americans. And before that the Mamelukes and the Arab invaders. He had it! What Khartoum was saying was, given the chance, Isk would again re-create itself. No one ever truly conquered this city . . . They either passed through or were adopted by the city they thought had fallen to them.

“What do you want from us?” Raf demanded.

“Us?”

“With the city, with me . . .”

He faced her across a low table and both of them understood that they’d finally arrived at the real reason why they were there.

“Iskandryia . . .” said the Senator.

“Is in chaos.” Raf shrugged. “We’ve had this conversation. What matters is . . . Why are you here?”

“To offer help.” The Senator sat back, forcing herself to relax. Unfortunately, Raf saw her do it. Which just made her stressed again.

“Help?” Right, thought Raf. Obvious really. “And in return?”

For a second it looked as if Senator Liz was about to say, there is no “in return.” But something in Raf’s smile stopped her. “The situation is tricky.” She began again . . .

Your carpet is moth-eaten, hardly worth buying, the quality is poor, besides it is too small, too expensive and I don’t need a carpet anyway. . . Raf had heard it often, that opening position in every negotiation. The one that said, out of the goodness of my heart I’m going to agree to rob you blind.

Tuning out the low drone of the Senator’s explanation, Raf traced the Doppler spore of a cherry top as it raced down Fuad Premier, passed through Shallalat Gardens and vanished along Avenue Horreya. Orders had gone out that afternoon locking down the city. Leave had been cancelled across all divisions of the police, even the morales. The military were on standby, confined to barracks but ready. His Sudanese guard patrolled the streets around the mansion.

Raf could imagine tomorrow’s headlines.

“. . . does that sound acceptable?”

Yanking his attention back to the chamber, Raf smiled at the American woman seated opposite. “Run through that last part again,” he said. “I think I might have missed something . . .”

Unsweetened by its sugar coating the pill was bitter. On behalf of PaxForce—read Washington, Berlin and Paris—Senator Liz demanded the right to station armed observers within the city to keep the peace. But there was worse, infinitely worse. And finally Raf understood why Hamzah had been desperate to see his daughter safely married, so desperate that he’d been prepared to bribe Lady Nafisa to achieve it.

“We have evidence,” the Senator was saying. Flipping open her old-fashioned file, she pulled out a stack of 10 × 4s, all of them copyrighted to “Jean René” and dated decades earlier.

The photographs might have been arranged in chronological order, or by level of atrocity, or maybe the order was as random as the place names printed on the back and war really was God’s way of teaching geography.

Mostly the dead were children, some almost old enough to count as adults, if that threshold was sufficiently flexible. They varied in race, skin colour, age and sex. And the only thing they had in common besides a gaping cross cut into each chest was the bareness of their feet and the raggedness of ripped uniforms . . . Inasmuch as T-shirts and cargo pants could count as uniform. Most of the dead also wore amulets, small leather bags, metal charms and badges, lots and lots of badges.

Cheap and plastic, black on red. The eyes of a saint above the beard of a prophet.

“Colonel Abad,” Senator Liz said redundantly.

Raf already knew that. He’d had a tri-D of the man on his study wall at school. Between the plastic badges, dark poppies blossomed against dark skin, wounds from the bullets those amulets were meant to stop. Flies hovered frozen around faces that stared blindly into a sky that time had long since left behind.

“Hamzah was involved in this?” Raf’s question was hesitant. As if he couldn’t quite believe his own suspicion, but the crosses that disfigured each corpse were unmistakable.

“No,” said Senator Liz, “this was done by Ras Michael’s Church Militant. Those responsible were tried and executed or jailed. These are Hamzah’s responsibility . . .” She took the remaining photographs from Raf and discarded the top third, handing back the rest.

They were no less ugly. Children still lay faceup to the sky, their feather-and-bone amulets as impotent as the combat patches tacked to their shirts.God Rules, read one T-shirt. Below the slogan someone had sewn a star, cut from red cloth.

“Don’t tell me,” said Raf, reaching for the original photographs. “This is one side.” He flipped over a photograph. “And this is the other . . .” Side by side on the table, a dead girl and a ripped-open boy stared back at him.

Senator Liz nodded.

“So why go for Hamzah rather than Colonel Abad?”

“Because we know where Hamzah is. Anyway,” she said, “our best intelligence suggests Abad’s already dead.”

“Already . . .” Raf tossed down his photographs. “If you’ll excuse me.” He didn’t wait for her answer, just stood up and strode out of the chamber. On his way through the door, he flicked off the lights. Maybe she’d learn something about the nature of darkness.

Raf had an office full of researchers back at Third Circle, an Intelligence Department based out of the barracks at Ras el-Tin and a dozen detectives, one or two of whom might even be able to do their job; but he found the information he needed in the kitchens, holding a skillet in one hand and a wooden spatula in his other. Flames roared from a gas ring as the gaunt man shuffled coffee beans backward and forward, like a skeleton mixing concrete.

“There was a war,” said Raf. “When Hamzah Effendi was a child.”

“Before you were born?” Khartoum sounded amused by his own question. “Yes, there were many wars. All unnecessary. What of it?”

What indeed?

“Who was in the right?” The question sounded stupid even as Raf asked it; but sometimes questions need to be asked, even stupid ones. And he knew the Sufi’s answer would be honest, no matter that the old man was partisan.

“No one was in the right,” said Khartoum.

“Then who was in the wrong?”

“No one.” Dark eyes regarded Raf, as piercing as those of a hawk. “They were children,” said Khartoum. “Not men, not women . . . You should ask who armed them. Who had an interest in seeing them fight? Or maybe this is a question you too think best left unasked . . .”