predominantly sexual desire that I feel for Lamia, but rather admiration and liking. I also feel a curious protective urge to shield her from the attentions of younger men such as you.’
‘Younger men such as me? And what are younger men such as me, when they are at home?’
‘Younger men who have taken immaturity to an entirely new level. Younger men who mistake bravado for experience. Younger men who have no earthly sense of self-preservation. I remember you in France, Sabir, blundering from one disaster to the next without the faintest effort at self-control. It was an absolute miracle that you and your two Gypsy friends survived the eye-man’s attentions. In a rational world, you would all three be dead by now.’
‘And then you would have Lamia for yourself? Is that it?’
Calque thrust himself up from the table. Sabir did the same. One of the waiters had been just about to ask them for their drinks order, but, sensing their lack of attention to the menu, he veered towards another table like a liner changing tack mid-ocean.
‘I don’t believe this.’ Lamia was heading towards them from the direction of the restrooms. ‘Are you two arguing again? I could hear you all the way across the restaurant. Must this happen every time I go away? It is impossible. I know you like each other. Why can’t you simply acknowledge it, and stop competing all the time? What were you arguing about this time?’
Calque made a sheepish face, and sat back down to finish his cigarette. Sabir shrugged, and pretended to watch the marimba trio.
‘Were you arguing about me? Is that it?’
‘Of course not. Why should we do that?’
Lamia sat down beside them and signalled to the elusive waiter. ‘Why indeed?’
45
Abi left it until well after Veracruz to put his plan into action. The trio were approaching Lake Catemaco on the coast road when he told Dakini to dish the baseball cap and sunglasses, and make her presence felt. Athame, Nawal, and Aldinach – who had chosen to join the other de Bale women as a female for the duration – were hunched down out of sight in the well of the people carrier.
Lamia was driving the Cherokee, with Sabir asleep on the back seat. Calque was reading a book.
Lamia lurched upright. Then she poked Calque in the ribs with her elbow. ‘I knew it. It was Dakini I saw back in Houston. I’ve just seen her again. With a different car this time.’
Calque threw the book aside. ‘Where?’
‘She was pulled over in the Pemex station getting fuel. That one. Back there.’
‘Was she alone?’
‘Looked like it. But it was a very big car for just one person.’
‘Are you sure it was her?’
‘Don’t you think I know my own sister?’
‘Step on the gas then. We’ve still got a chance of losing her. She can’t leave without paying and giving the guy his tip.’
Lamia threw the Cherokee into the first serious curve she’d encountered since the service station. ‘I knew we should have taken the cuota road out of Veracruz. There’s only one way out of here. They’ll simply be waiting for us at the junction at Acayucan.’
‘Give me the map.’
‘Sabir’s got it.’
Calque stretched over to the rear seat and prodded Sabir’s leg.
Sabir cracked open an eye. ‘What is it? Why are you waking me up? And why is Lamia driving like a maniac?’
‘We have company.’
Sabir jack-knifed into a sitting position. ‘Where?’
‘Back at the Pemex station. They were still tanking up. With a bit of luck, we’ll have a couple of kilometres head start on them.’
‘Forget it. They’ll simply wait for us at Acayucan.’
‘That’s just what Lamia said. But I remember a smaller road on the map. A dirt road that runs through the mountains towards Jaltipan. If we get to the turn-off before they see us, we’ll have a fair chance of giving them the slip. They’ll never expect us to do such a stupid thing as that.’
‘Stupid. Yes. You said it, Calque, not me.’ Sabir blitzed a look at the map and then passed it across the seats. ‘You’re right about the dirt road, though. But I don’t like it. It’s no more than a farm track, really – they even show it as a fractured orange line on the map, and that’s never a good thing.’ He glanced at the empty road behind them. ‘If the Corpus see us taking it, man, we’ll be sitting ducks.’
‘So what’s the difference? We’re sitting ducks already.’
46
‘That’s it. They took the dirt road, just as you expected.’
Abi clapped his hands together. ‘They’ll have tremendous fun going over the Cerro Santa Marta. From sea level to 1879 metres in just under twenty kilometres. On a road that isn’t paved. With drops either side you wouldn’t even want to throw your grandmother over.’
‘Shall we follow them?’
‘What’s the point? They’ll pop out again in three or four hours’ time in Jaltipan. Gasping for breath, probably. We can pick them up with the tracker there, no problem. That’s if they don’t break their necks thinking we’re following them. I love doing things like this.’
‘Like what?’
‘Unexpected things. What the Americans call coming in from left base.’
‘Like what you did with the railway inspector and his wife? Downloading the child pornography?’
‘Exactly. It makes me sick coming at things straight on. There’s always another way – a roundabout way – to achieve the same end.’
‘Tell me another one you did, Abi.’
Abi relaxed back onto the passenger seat. ‘Okay. Seeing as we unexpectedly have a few extra hours to waste.’ He pretended to be thinking. In fact he’d been rehearsing the story he was going to tell Vau for the past fifteen minutes. Telling stories was the only way you could ever teach Vau anything – he was like a child that way. ‘You remember that bastard de la Maigrerit de Gavillane?’
‘The one who insulted Madame, our mother, over the table placement while I was in hospital with a torn meniscus?’
‘Yes. Him. Because she was a widow, and because she had come without an escort to a formal dinner, he placed her below those upstarts with the Napoleonic title. The Prince and Princesse de…’ Abi shrugged. ‘They’re so insignificant, I can’t even remember their names.’
‘It doesn’t matter, Abi. Tell me about de Gavillane.’
‘He knew exactly what he was doing, the bastard – his father, and Monsieur, our father, had fallen out during the war over the Nazi question. You know how the Count felt about Hitler. Well, the de Gavillanes were enthusiastic fellow travellers to the Third Reich. After the war they hushed it all up, of course, and made out that they were Resistance heroes, but nobody believed them. The de Gavillane name even appeared on denouncements secretly given to high-up Nazi Party members and to the Milice – all the denouncements concerned people who just happened to own land abutting the de Gavillane’s country estate. By the end of the war, they had a 10,000-hectare park around their chateau. People don’t forget that sort of thing.’
‘What do you mean “people”?’
