“Iskandryia,” said Raf. “However, I will not be a judge.” He paused to let them consider that. “And the rules of evidence will be those used by The Hague.”

“And the judges?”

“Three,” Raf said. “French, German, and American . . .” He was selecting the nationalities as he went along. Raf wondered if any of them realized that. And if the Grand Jury did decide Hamzah had a case to answer, then they’d automatically become his judges. Though Raf didn’t think he’d mention that fact just then.

“Excuse me . . .” Raf touched his earbead and took a call, nodding rapidly. “I have to go,” he told the crowd. “My men have found a second bomb outside a children’s home in Karmous.” Pushing Hamzah slightly, Raf steered the industrialist towards the waiting Bentley and saw the man from C3N materialize beside him, persistent as a shadow.

“Will you be acting as prosecutor?”

Raf turned back and smiled in admiration. There was a lot to recommend sheer bloody-mindedness when it came to a job. “No,” he said. “One of the judges will be chosen as prosecuting judge. And I won’t be acting for the defence either . . . She will.” Raf jerked his thumb backward and heard Zara gasp.

Which was around the point the second EMP bomb exploded, followed by a third and a fourth, so those watching newsfeeds in other countries never knew if Zara’s shock was at being named defender or the fact that El Iskandryia had begun to shut down around her.

“Boss.” Bodyguards closed in on both sides, obviously anxious but still functioning. “We’ve got to get you back inside.”

Overhead, bright stars blossomed between clouds as the lights of the city began to flicker, its sodium halo fading from orange through palest yellow to perfect night. Somewhere far distant a dog began to bark.

“I shouldn’t be here,” said Zara, “you know that . . .”

Here was Raf’s bedroom, with its domed roof and high windows, naked babies staring down from the painted ceiling and the air rich with the scent of orchids. A newly cut bunch stood in a Lalique vase beside the bed. Where Khartoum had found tiger orchids, Raf couldn’t begin to imagine. A smaller vase was thick with lilies and a silver bowl on his glass-topped dressing table contained potpourri. Neither flowers nor bowl had been there when they finally fell asleep.

But Raf’s smile was at the memory of warm skin and the smell of lapsang suchong, mixed with something citrus, labelled for an American/Japanese designer and bottled in Frankfurt. The tiny scent flask was on his dressing table along with the rest of Zara’s cosmetics. And, actually, that hadn’t been there either . . .

“Maybe I’m the one who should be somewhere else,” said Raf and Zara smiled, rolling over with a linen sheet tucked around her. The night before she’d had darkness to hide behind and only a candle flame to let them see each other. Now the sun streamed in through high windows, turning the white marble floor to a sheet of glistening ice, and the sea breeze tasted of iodine. Outside, the whole city was silent, with Rue Riyad Pasha devoid of cars. Or at least of cars that moved.

“Let it go,” said Raf, giving the sheet a small tug.

Zara shook her head.

“Please,” he said and so she did, at least partly. Letting him unwrap her shoulders to reveal full breasts and the start of a soft stomach. Her skin was honey, her nipples dark walnut. The rest she kept hidden, one hand holding her modesty in place.

“Marry me,” Raf said.

She pulled a face and grinned, but her smile died the second she realized Raf’s suggestion was serious. “Last night you wanted to have me arrested.”

“That was last night.”

Zara nodded. “Yeah,” she said, “that makes sense.”

It did too, at least to him. To be honest, Raf didn’t know the reason he’d shot the question. Being institutionalized did that to you. Half the time you didn’t really know the reason for most things. Time was, as the fox would say . . . time was he could blame what he did on the fox. Now he had no one to blame but himself and he was, if not white-knuckle sober then, at the very least, white-knuckle sane. Sometime or other, when he was feeling braver, he’d try to explain that to Zara.

Try to explain it and fail, most probably, but he’d still try. This too was coded into that famous eight-thousand-line guarantee.

“What will happen to my father . . .”

“You’ll marry me if I get him off?”

“Is that your price?”

Raf sighed. “Is it yours?”

“No,” Zara said shakily. “I just need to know. Will he be executed?” She would have cried, except she was all cried out. The first part of last night she’d spent wrapped tight in Raf’s arms, sometimes angry and occasionally scared, but mostly just crying silently into his shoulder. The second part . . . For all that nothing really happened, that was somewhere they’d both need to go.

“Look,” said Raf, “he may actually be innocent.”

Zara looked at him. “I can’t stand up there and defend him you know . . .”

“It’s your choice,” Raf said. Meaning that it wasn’t, not really.

“No,” Zara sat up, taking the sheet with her. “You’re missing the point. I refuse to defend him if he won’t defend himself.”

Raf understood how she felt. Her father had killed 183 people, all but 12 of them children. What Hamzah Effendi did was, almost literally, indefensible. And yet . . . Sitting beside her, in a sunlit bedroom thick with the scent of hothouse flowers, Raf told Zara the story as Hamzah had told it to him, about Ka, Sarah and the Colonel . . .

The evening before had begun very differently. In the light of an emergency lamp, seven people had watched Zara hit Raf and only one, a female clerk from the technical section, had made any move to stop Zara from taking a second shot. Which told Raf something he didn’t like about Hakim, Ahmed and the rest of his officers.

Although maybe such a reaction was inevitable in a city where crimes by or against women got dealt with by a separate force. And if any of them really thought women were incapable of being deeply dangerous, they should meet Hu San, leader of Seattle’s Five Winds Society. Compared to her, Iskandryia’s Dons were amateurs, which they mostly were. The only real professional among them was the man Raf had just arrested, and that was for something else.

“You poisonous . . .”

Raf had watched Zara fail to find the right word.

“Putain de merde?” he suggested.

She didn’t even pause. “How could you?”

“Arrest him? Easily, I just pulled out a card and read the words.” Which wasn’t true because, for a start, Raf didn’t carry a Miranda card and secondly, he had uniforms to do that shit, but he was playing to an audience and she knew it. That was one of the things making her so angry.

“You . . . I thought you liked him.”

Better than me, that was the subtext, or maybe not. Perhaps he was misreading the feeling that hung sour as ghost’s breath in the air between them. Chances were, she was just scared.

Raf sighed and cleared his head of the Huntsville psychotrash that flooded it every time he tried to think about what he felt. Other people’s feelings he could do. His own . . . He’d been analysed so many times by Dr. Millbank that he could no longer distinguish what was emotionally real from what he’d been told were his feelings. Which was weird because, and the fox always used to agree with this, half the time Raf was pretty sure he felt nothing at all.

“Are you listening to me?” That was the point at which Zara pushed her face in close.

No, thought Raf, not really. And before he could stop himself, he had leant forward and kissed her, very lightly.