In the Palace of the Khans (19 page)

Taeela kept the beam of the torch trained on the bottom of the right hand wall. Again he heard the mutter of counting. She stopped, knelt, and used her gadget to open two slabs that looked no different from all the others. They helped Fohdrahko kneel and crawl slowly through. Nigel followed and Taeela came last, pulling the slabs together and locking them firm.

At the sound of the solid masonry settling into place things changed. The desperation of flight receded like water flowing down a plug-hole. Nigel rose to his feet, gave a long, slow, sigh and looked around.

They were in a fair-sized room, except that the ceiling was low enough for him to be able to reach up and touch it with his fingertips. There were bright-patterned mats on the floor, two cots with gaudy bedspreads, chairs, a table, a cupboard with drawers, two shelves of books, and a washstand with basin and jug, and a mirror above it. Everything was simple and solid and old-fashioned, apart from a slick-looking PC console against the left-hand wall.

Three walls were whitewashed, but covered with large cartoonish outlines of rabbits painted in different colours, like a nursery frieze for a giant's baby. The fourth wall looked out over the river through the same stone lattice as the room above, with a small curtained area in the corner beside it.

Taeela paid no attention to any of this. She gestured to Nigel to help, and again they lifted Fohdrahko to his feet and walked him over to one of the cots and shuffled round until they could lower him to a sitting position. He made feeble efforts to rise as Taeela knelt and took off his sandals, then sighed and let her help him twist round and lie down.

She stood and spoke to him firmly, a nurse with her patient, and bent and kissed his forehead. He smiled and closed his eyes.

Now, at last, she loosed her hold on herself, relaxing the force of will that had kept her going, decisive and clear-headed in the face of horror and loss. Her shoulders sagged and the set of her jaw slackened and voice quivered.

“Oh, Nigel! Dudda is dead! He is dead! He is dead!” She croaked.

The appeal was intense, direct. Her misery and need were all there was. He lurched towards her and wrapped his arms clumsily round her. She collapsed sobbing onto his shoulder.

And he needed her as much as she needed him, someone to cling to, share it all with, the horror of what had been done, the dread and anxiety of what would happen next. His parents—what had happened to them? There'd been gunfire in the Great Hall, bullets, splinters of marble and lapis flying around … And Fohdrahko, the only one who could help, himself helpless …

“Oh, Nigel!”

“How …? Who …?”

He barely knew what he was asking. The words had just come. Something outside the nightmare.

Her sobs cut short. He felt her body stiffen.

“Avron,” she whispered, easing herself away from him.

“Avron Dikhtar? What about him?”

“In my room. I knew his voice. He said where the men must break the wall. He knows where the place is. Perhaps one time we forgot to switch off the closed circuit. He does not know the numbers to open the door.”

Yes! Nigel's mind snatched at the chance to think. Mr Dikhtar had been scared stiff that morning—he'd known this was going to happen. It had been a new guard on the door, who hadn't made much of a job of searching Nigel, but he'd been in the plot and tried to capture Taeela … And that morning Nigel had set the alarms off, Mr Dikhtar had been in control of security. He'd've known a lot of the President's guards were out of action. They were training new ones, Taeela had said. He could have picked them …

And the men who'd come storming into the Great Hall, they'd been soldiers … Someone high up in the army must be in the plot too …

And Lake Vamar. The plotters had already set things up there at so that when the time came they could make it look like some local hunter taking pot shots at the President when he next paid a visit. They didn't expect to nail him then, but it would allow them to send most of the loyal soldiers up there to crack down on the villagers. Then they'd move their own men into the palace and stage their coup. He'd taken the Ridgwells there on the spur of the moment, and they weren't really ready, but the helicopter crash had made it too good a chance to miss, and the Tribute ceremony gave them a perfect target, so they'd gone ahead.

Footsteps sounded on the floor above. Nigel froze, straining to listen. Three, no, four people coming into the room. Voices, questioning. Somebody already there, nearer the window, answering. A man giving orders, the words muffled, but the urgency and anger clear. The Dirzhani for “Yes, sir.” Footsteps—two sets? Three?—hurrying out of the room.

Taeela was at the PC console waiting for the screen to settle. Nigel crept across and watched over her shoulder. Her fingers moved decisively on the keys, and he was looking down at an angle into her living room from high in the corner to the left of the door. He could see the area around the sofa and TV, the window and the whole of the right-hand wall including the desk, with the splintered panel beside it.

The room seemed to be empty, but after a moment or two a soldier hurried in carrying a tool-box, which he placed in front of the desk and opened. He knelt and tried the drawers, but they seemed to be locked, so he chose a tool and started to pry at the central one.

Three men emerged through the broken panel, a short, stout officer in a smart parade uniform with three stars on his shoulder tabs, another with only one, and a younger man with two bars.

“Colonel Sesslizh!” hissed Taeela. “Why, Nigel? Why? My father … Oh, it is horrible! I will …”

A single dull thud broke the silence. On the screen the soldier who had been trying to open the desk reeled back and fell. The three officers staggered into each other but kept their feet, stared for a moment at the desk, flung up arms to protect mouths and nostrils, and rushed off screen. The soldier rose to his knees and started to crawl away, but then collapsed and lay still.

“They are such fools!” snarled Taeela. “Of course there is a trap!”

Nigel stared at the empty room. The soldier lay where he had fallen, not moving. Some kind of gas, he guessed. They wouldn't be trying to get through this way, then, not for a bit. And what with that other trap in the passage above, they were going to be jumpy about trying to break through anywhere. That meant there might be time to wait till darkness, get out somehow, sneak back to the Embassy … Or perhaps his father could fix something. For him, anyway. What about Taeela? What would his father …?

“Can we see what's happening in the Great Hall?” he whispered.

Taeela started as if he'd woken her from a trance and pressed a couple of keys. A menu list in Dirzhani came up. More keys, and there was the Great Hall, seen looking down the stairs towards the entrance. A camera crew was on the dais photographing the President's body sprawled in his blood, his arm still reaching out in that final gesture, telling Taeela to go. This was almost the angle from which she must have seen it happen.

Her face was set, her mouth a hard slit.

“I will have their blood!” she muttered. “I will have their blood!”

She reached for the keyboard.

“No, please!” he said. “Can we see …?”

“Lucy and Nick? Look, they are there. I think they are not hurt.”

She worked the mouse and brought up the view across the Great Hall. The audience were still in their chairs, watched by a line of soldiers, their guns held ready to use. Nigel's father was sitting stiffly upright, staring in front of him as if he were doing his best to ignore a foul smell. His left arm was round Nigel's mother, who was slumped against his shoulder with her head bowed so that only her dark frizz showed. Nigel ached to reach to her, to whisper somehow in her mind that he was not far away, watching, safe.

There was a commotion in the row behind them, where a couple of soldiers had forced their way between the seats and were trying to drag a man out, and he was resisting. From the gaps in the rows it looked as if he wasn't the first. At the end of the row stood an officer and a civilian. The civilian studied the list in his hand and pointed. This time the victim rose and came without a struggle, and a soldier led him away.

“Who's that chap with the list?” said Nigel.

“I do not know him. The man they take away is Mattu Mandli. He is mayor in Dara. You see the girl next where he sits. His
daughter, Jannah. In my school.… You see enough, Nigel?”

“I suppose so. I wonder what's really happening … There must be someone in charge of it all.”

“I look.”

The monitor flickered through a series of scenes, different views of the Great Hall, one with soldiers guarding the men they'd extracted from the audience and some of the chiefs who'd come to declare their tributes; a room full of soldiers, weaponless, looking angry and dejected, sitting in rows on the floor, guarded by other soldiers, armed; palace servants standing around, frightened or excited or both; four men having what was clearly a serious argument … This might be it. One was the colonel with the hissy name who they'd seen in Taeela's living room, one was a tall, smooth-faced soldier, also with three stars on his shoulder-tabs, one was the angry-looking chieftain who'd brought a tree as his tribute, still in his black and orange robes, and the fourth was Mr Dikhtar. The argument was between the chieftain and the two soldiers. Mr Dikhtar was desperately trying to keep the peace. The other three ignored him until the chieftain turned on his heel and strode away, with Mr Dikhtar scuttling behind him. The two soldiers followed, making no attempt to catch up.

“That's the colonel again, isn't it?” said Nigel. “And Dikhtar, of course. Any idea who the other two are?”

“The chieftain, he is Adzhar Taerzha,” Taeela growled. “He wants his son to marry me. Then he will be Khan. He is West Dirzh. The other soldier is Colonel Madzhalid. He is East Dirzh. Sesslizh too. Of course they fight him. I tell you, they are such fools! Let bad things happen to them! All of them! I curse them! I will drink their blood!”

She stared at the retreating backs, her chest heaving as the deep breaths came and went. She gave a violent shudder and turned to him.

“Nigel, I am hungry.”

He looked at his watch. Twenty past one. Barely an hour since he'd watched Taeela start down the stairway. He shouldn't have been able to swallow a mouthful after what had happened, but he was famished.

“Is there anything to eat?”

“Of course. I will leave the screen on so you can you see what happens with Lucy and Nick.”

There was a shelf of canned food in the cupboard, another with plates and mugs and cutlery, and a small fridge. While he carried their meal to the table and opened the cans she took some clothes out of a drawer and retired behind the curtain in the corner. Fohdrahko seemed to be peacefully asleep, on his back, with his lips parted, and snoring gently.

Taeela returned, now dressed in the sort of clothes Nigel had seen Lisa and Natalie wearing, and they settled cornerwise at the table, where he could watch the screen and she didn't have to, but close enough to whisper.

“What happens now?” he said. “Is there a way out?”

“Fofo will show us. He knows all these hidden ways. They are the secret of the eunuchs. They kill any other person they find here. If they bring a man in here they cover his eyes. The men who put the computer in this room, and all the other things, Fofo brought them here with their eyes covered.

“He is the last of the eunuchs. There will be no more. He makes new rules. He didn't cover my eyes, and he teaches me the secret ways. He drew the animals for me to keep me safe when I was small.”

“He can't take us much further, can he? He looks pretty well done for.”

“I will give him food when we have finished. He will not eat while we eat. Then he must sleep again. When it is dark we will go to your embassy.”

“Trouble is, that's where they'll be expecting us to head for. Is there anywhere else we could go? Have you got any friends …”

“No friends … no friends …”

Her voice was as bleak as a sunless planet.

“People I know, a few,” she went on. “They will be so afraid. I do not know what they will do … Nigel, I think it is best I stay here. I will hide with Fofo. He will not leave the palace. You must go alone. If they find you they will not hurt you. You are son of the British ambassador.”

He wasn't even tempted.

“Not on your life,” he said. “Besides, these guys—suppose they do pick me up, they're not going to tell anyone. They'll just beat me up till I've told them where you are and then chuck me in the river, like as not. Do you think it would be crazy to try and call the embassy on my mobile? It should work from here, and I've got a number that's safe that end.”

“Not your mobile,” she said. “My father tells me, use only this telephone. I'll show you.”

“Hang on. Something's happening … Looks like they're taking your dad away. Do you want to …?”

She was already hurrying over to the console. He joined her and she slid her hand into his and gripped it tight. They watched a couple of soldiers spread a stretcher out on the dais, dump the body on it and carry it away, Another couple of men spread a bit of canvas over the blotch of blood where it had lain and weighted it in place with what looked like account books.

“It is the last time I see him,” said Taeela.

For a long while she stood there, weeping silently. He himself could hardly see for tears. Then, not letting go of his hand, she wiped her eyes with her other sleeve, closed the picture, clicked on an icon and keyed in a code. A panel opened in the surface of the console, bringing a telephone up with it. He watched which keys she used as she restored the scene in the Great Hall on the monitor and returned to her meal.

He fetched the list of numbers out of his shoulder bag and checked the country code for the UK, keyed it in, followed by Hastings, end of World War One and Battle of Britain, all backwards, pausing between each date to make sure he'd got the next one right. Silence. UK ring-tone. Clicks and whistles. Dirzhani ring-tone. At last, a known voice.