The court recessed while the ship’s medical officer was summoned. And then everyone waited again while a tall German woman introduced herself to the court and was sworn in.

“You are Lena Schultz?”

“I am.”

“And you trained where?”

“Heidelberg . . .”

Raf couldn’t resist glancing at von Bismarck. The young Graf leant forward and Raf knew he, at least, would regard her every word as absolute.

“You are the surgeon for the SS Jannah?”

She shook her head and dark hair flicked across to touch her cheeks. “I am not a surgeon,” said Dr. Schultz. “I am a general practitioner.”

“I see,” said Raf, sounding as if he didn’t. “Can you tell me why Utopia Lines employ a general practitioner?”

She looked at him.

“Instead of medical software.” Raf paused, wondering how best to qualify his question. “I thought that statistically . . .”

“Some people,” she said heavily, “actually prefer the human touch.” Some people being rich. At least that was the inference.

“Really?” Raf shrugged. “In that case, don’t such people bring their own?”

“It happens, sometimes.” Her tone made it quite clear she didn’t like that question or him. “Now,” she said. “You need me to present an opinion on a medical matter?”

“Sort of . . .” Raf pointed to where the boy still shielded his eyes from a sun that caught on the edge of his open shirt and cast its shadow across his bare chest and stomach.

“How old is that boy?”

The woman barely glanced at the image. “Impossible to say,” she said firmly.

“Is he twenty?”

“Obviously not.”

“Six?”

She shook her head crossly.

“So you can say,” Raf told her. “That at the very least he’s older than six and younger than twenty . . .”

Sometime between my burning down a school and the killing of Micky O’Brian.

“You didn’t say you wanted a rough estimate . . .”

“We can get specific later,” said Raf. “At the moment, any kind of estimate would be good.”

One minute turned into two and still she gazed intently at the screen . . . Longer than was necessary, but Raf didn’t hurry her. The cameras were hard at work catching every furrow of her brow, every tiny twitch that pulled at her mouth as she lost herself in thought.

“Was this boy well fed?”

From his place in the dock Hamzah shook his head, the movement entirely unconscious. And up on the bench St. Cloud cleared a sour smile from his face so fast only Raf saw it come and go. There were other smiles, fleeting and bitter, from ordinary people on the public benches. Mostly from those, like Khartoum, who were old enough to have the memories.

Into Raf’s head came thoughts of drought-twisted olive groves, crumbling irrigation channels, bushes on which apricots wizened before they were even ripe enough to be picked. Poisoned oases and fields of millet being turned to straw by a sun that hung high overhead.

“Enough,” Raf insisted to himself and the images vanished.

“Well fed . . . ?” He shook his head. “I think that unlikely.”

“In that case . . .” The woman hesitated. “If the child was properly nourished, then I’d put his age at nine, with a sixty percent certainty. You have to look at the wrists,” she added, as if that explained everything. “Chest too, to check development of the rib cage . . . Badly nourished, maybe ten, even eleven. My professional opinion is that the child is unlikely to be much older.”

“Court records say thirteen,” insisted Raf, and he made a point of double-checking the UN report in his hand.

“Thirteen . . . ? Very unlikely.” Dr. Schultz’s stare was a challenge. “Twelve if you must, assuming he’d been starved from birth. Except, of course,” she shrugged, “if he’d been starved from birth, then disease would have killed him before this.”

“So definitely not thirteen?”

“Ashraf Bey.”

Raf turned round to find the Khedive watching him.

“Can you tell me where this is headed?” Tewfik Pasha’s question was abrupt, but there was something unsettled in his eyes. As if the youth had only just become aware that he sat exposed in front of the world’s press, acting as magister while the richest man in North Africa was tried for mass murder.

And there was another truth from which the Khedive could find no escape. It was widely known that Zara had taken al-Mansur as her lover. And for all that the bey wasn’t a true believer, he still had baraka. A difficult quality to pin down, although luck, wisdom and blessing were in there somewhere. All those and an aura of strength that the poor believed clung like attar of roses to anyone who chose the stony path.

“Where is this headed?” asked Raf. “Towards a conclusion, I hope.”

“It matters how old Hamzah was?”

Raf nodded.

“And to whom does it matter?”

To me, Raf almost said but he kept silent on that point. “To the city,” he said instead. “And also to you, as the city’s magister, I presume . . .”

“Yes,” said the Khedive, “you do.”

Raf looked puzzled.

“You presume,” Tewfik Pasha said with a tight smile. “But then, perhaps somebody has to . . . Tell us why it matters.”

Raf picked up his notebook, tapped an icon for The Hague Convention and flicked to the relevant subsection. Ready to read . . .

“If a combatant is twelve or under at the time of a battle, s/he shall be exempt from direct responsibility and such responsibility lies with whoever issued the command . . .”

For a moment Raf thought the words were his, happening only in his head. Then he saw the fear on the face of Hamzah Effendi and realized the industrialist had also heard the gruff voice. As had Senator Liz, the young German Graf and a shocked-looking St. Cloud.

Over on her bench, Zara began crying. Only Avatar looked at ease.

There’d been tears too from Hamzah when he finally realized who was speaking. Instinctively, the thickset industrialist had straightened up, standing taller in the dock.

“Ya Colonel,” he said, sounding amazed.

“Lieutenant Ka.”

And then everyone in the court watched as Hamzah craned his head, looking round for his old commander. Only there was no Colonel Abad. Just a cracked radio held by Iskandryia’s favourite DJ and a familiar voice that echoed from a wall speaker.

“You never did get to the source of the Nile,” said the Colonel.

Hamzah shook his head.

“But you still got me to safety . . .” The voice sounded content. “Well, you got me to Koenig Pasha, which was almost as good. PaxForce wanted to kill me you know . . .”

“You’re a radio?”

Colonel Abad chuckled. “You might put it like that. Langley built me for counterinsurgency use in Colombia, then the Soviets patched in some ideology and relocated me to the Sudan. The CIA got me back eventually, ripped out the politics and offered me the Children of God.”

“But I was Islamic Fist, first battalion, company A.”

“No/yes . . . Well, some of the time,” conceded the Colonel. “It wasn’t always so simple . . .”

“You,” said Senator Liz to Avatar, “bring that machine here.” Her New Jersey accent sliced through what threatened to become a conversation between old comrades.

Avatar did as he was told, placing the clockwork radio carefully on the judicial bench in front of the American woman. The radio was small, battered and scratched along the bottom. Its shattered handle suggested someone had once kicked the thing.

“You can hear me?”

“Of course I can hear you . . . Senator Elizabeth Lee Elsing.”

“And you know me how . . . ?”

“Your face matches all points on a security photograph taken when Elizabeth Lee Elsing came aboard. Your voice profile fits exactly a phrase Elizabeth Lee Elsing recorded to control the strongbox in her suite.”