The Arabesk Trilogy Omnibus Read Free

jewelled slippers.
    The fox didn’t like the paintings. But then, the fox was a purist and had problems with Orientalist kitsch. And the fact that the fox was invisible to everyone but ZeeZee didn’t make it any less real. Though it wasn’t real, of course, not in the way the yellow cabs lurching along Rue Missala were real. ZeeZee had come up with a number of explanations for its existence. The fox’s favourite was that it was an autonomous construct of unprocessed dark memory.
    In other times it might have been regarded as a ghost…
    Sitting outside Le Trianon in an area roped off from pedestrians, the thin blond observer with the flowing beard and tangled dreadlocks washed down his second croissant with the dregs of his third cappuccino: and wished that what passed for breakfast at the madersa where he was staying would feed more than a stray mouse.
    Ashraf al-Mansur—known as ZeeZee to the police, his therapist and a Chinese Triad boss who was undoubtedly even now searching the world to have him killed—had hated the interior of Le Trianon on sight. But since he’d needed to find somewhere to spend his mornings, this café was where he’d taken to eating. Now he just found the interior irritating.
    “Another cappuccino, Your Excellency?”
    Adjusting his Versace shades and brushing pastry flakes from the sleeve of his black silk suit, the young man nodded. “Why not,” he said slowly. It wasn’t like he had anything else to do.
    “Very good, Your Excellency.” The Italian waiter bustled away, totally ignoring two English tourists who’d been waiting ten minutes for him to take their order. It was Saturday morning, four days after he’d arrived in the city, two days after he’d first met the industrialist Hamzah Quitrimala and one day after he’d finally agreed to marry the man’s “difficult” daughter. And every day, bar the day he’d actually arrived, he’d visited the café.
    So now he was being treated as a regular. Which made sense, because by treating him as such, the patron hoped that was what he would become. Besides, once the patron had discovered that the excellency with the matted beard and odd hair would be working upstairs, it became inevitable that ZeeZee should take his place in a magic group who got tables when they wanted, exactly where they wanted them.
    Situated directly over the café were the offices of the Third Circle of Irrigation, famous as the department where Iskandryia’s greatest poet, Constantine Cavafy, once worked. What the Third Circle actually did ZeeZee had no idea, despite having arrived on time at the offices every morning for the last three days. He was beginning to think they did nothing.
    Certainly his assistant had looked deeply shocked that first morning when ZeeZee suggested he be told how the office operated. Politely, speaking English with an immaculate accent, the older man had made a firm but smiling counter-suggestion. His excellency might like to try Le Trianon, which was where many of the other directors spent their mornings—and their afternoons, too, come to that.
    ZeeZee’s office occupied a corner site and his excellency had done enough corporate shit in the US to know the prestige that carried. What was more, it overlooked Zaghloul and Missala, making it prime real estate. And everyone in the office was polite, way too polite, which meant Hamzah Quitrimala had a big mouth. Albeit no bigger than ZeeZee’s own, because his had been the throwaway comment that started a rumour-become-certain-fact that he was a traumatized survivor from one of the greatest fundamentalist atrocities in living history.
    “Your Excellency…” It was the patron himself, rather than the waiter who’d taken the original order. Putting the cappuccino carefully on the table, the patron picked up a crumb-strewn plate and hesitated.
    “Did Your Excellency enjoy breakfast?”
    ZeeZee nodded, adding, “Mumken lehsab,” as he instinctively scrawled an imaginary pen