The Arabesk Trilogy Omnibus Read Free Page B

than velvet.
    “Excellency…” In place of a sneering NCO stood a man in shock, career options cashing themselves in right in front of his own eyes. The diplomatic pass he now held was registered to a pashazade, the son of a pasha, senior grade. Basic survival instinct made Sergeant Aziz forget everything except his need to make the sweating tourist someone else’s problem.
    Not even bothering to stamp the carte blanche, the sergeant clicked his fingers for a jellaba-clad orderly and ordered the underling to escort the important pasha to the fast-track desk and quickly.
    Eyes like a maniac, beard like a dervish and a pair of combats that were way too long in the leg…plus the man kept looking round for something he obviously couldn’t see. Captain Yousef was worried. He had an apartment in a block off Rue Maamoun that needed repairs to its balcony, he’d only just made Captain and—God be praised—his wife was pregnant for the third time. He couldn’t afford to make a mistake.
    But which would be the mistake? To hold a notable with a carte blanche for questioning or to let through someone who couldn’t look less like a real bey? The call was impossible to make and the implications of getting it wrong were horrific—for himself and his wife, for his children, his home…
    “Sir…” Captain Yousef’s accent was elegantly Cairene. His words those of someone born not in El Iskandryia but in the capital. All the same, his voice shook as he asked his question. “Do you have some secondary form of identity?”
    The notable in the elephant shirt and shades said nothing and did nothing except shrug. It was obvious that his answer was no.
    Looking from slumped man to the elegant Ottoman diplomatic passport, Captain Yousef had real trouble reconciling the dishevelled mess in front of him with the photograph encrypted on the carte’s chip that gave his family as al-Mansur and his place of birth as Tunis.
    The passport was five years old, almost expired. The encrypted picture showed someone clean-shaven, neatly dressed, who stared hawk-eyed at the camera. While this man looked like the worst kind of American, the poor kind.
    And yet.
    And yet…
    “Ashraf Al-Mansur?”
    ZeeZee began to shrug, caught himself and smiled for the first time since he’d entered the airport. It was a rueful, what-the-fuck-am-I-doing-here smile. Not the kind that the Captain had ever seen from a real bey.
    Casually Captain Yousef adjusted his red fez with one hand, while touching a discreet buzzer on the underside of his desk. Trying to enter El Iskandryia on a fake passport was a serious crime. Pretending to be a notable was even worse. And when that passport was a diplomatic one, then… The Captain didn’t waste time worrying about it further. No point. His decision was a good one and besides, it was no longer his business. Orders specifically said to pass this kind of problem straight to the top.

 
    CHAPTER 4
    29th June
    “Merde, merde, merde…”
    The dark-haired girl hit a key and switched search engines. Looking for one that worked. So far she’d spent twenty highly illegal minutes learning precisely nothing about her future husband, who was probably even now at the al-Mansur madersa, delivered there from the airport in some smoke-windowed Daimler stretch.
    al-Mansur
    Nothing.
    Ashraf Bey.
    Nothing.
    Pashazade Ashraf.
    Nothing.
    It was enough to set off another litany of swear words. Zara bint-Hamzah spoke Arabic but swore in perfect Cairene French for the simple reason, established in childhood, that neither of her parents understood it.
    She also spoke English, as did her father, though she spoke hers with a New York twang. Two years studying at Columbia did that to you. Only that bit of her life was dead now and she was back home. And didn’t she know it.
    Ashraf Bey might as well not exist for all the record he’d left of his life to date. “Putain de merde…” Without thinking, Zara gulped the last of her slimmers’