and strolled back to the corner, out of sight, to watch and wait.
Two hours later, as he leaned against a tree eating a bag of nuts he bought from a cart at the far end of the park, Syfax saw two people step out onto the street. The first was a woman, middle-aged and short and rather pale, who emerged from the Onyx Club and began walking along the sidewalk. The second was a young man in a red jacket who jogged out of the trees across from the club and caught up to the woman just as she was turning the corner.
Syfax grinned and muttered, “Good work, kid.” He crossed the street and slowly made his way over, approaching from behind Kenan so he could get a good look at the woman and hear them talking before the corporal saw him.
“Excuse me, Doctor Medina?” Kenan jogged up alongside her. “Are you Doctor Medina?”
“Hm, yes?” The woman stopped short and glanced at him with wide eyes. “Who are you?”
“Corporal Kenan Agyeman, marshals’ office,” he said. “I’m, uh, I’m part of the task force investigating the fire at your office last night. I’m assisting the fire chief and local police.”
“Oh? Oh, yes.” The woman blinked and her shoulders relaxed a bit. “Yes, what can I do for you, corporal?”
“Just a few questions.” Kenan clasped his hands behind his back. “Do you know a man named Medur Hamuy? Tall, muscular build, late thirties.”
“I don’t recognize the name. But if he was a patient of ours, then I’m sure we have…oh, no, no, all the records must have been lost in the fire.” Genuine dismay passed over the doctor’s face. “All the patient records, serial numbers, invoices. Gone.”
Kenan pursed his lips for a moment. “What about a woman named Barika Chaou? Short, older, silver hair?”
The doctor froze for a fraction of a second, but there was a tiny flash of fear in the woman’s face.
“Ah, yes.” The doctor offered a smile, obviously false and full of nerves. “Yes, a lady in the government service, I believe? I do recall that name, although I think it has been some time since I last heard it.” Her speech began slowly, but accelerated the longer she went on. “Yes, I believe she was a patient several years ago, back when I was first starting out here in Arafez. It was quite an unexpected honor to have such a distinguished person in my shop back then. I was still wondering whether I would have any success at all in this country, and suddenly, here was this very important lady seeking my services! Oh, that was a good day. But what does any of this have to do with your investigation of the fire? Surely Senora Chaou was not hurt in the fire?”
Kenan shook his head. “No. Actually, I’m more interested in the electrical device you inserted into her arm so she could shock people with her fingers. And if there’s time, I’d like to hear about the bullet-proof armor in Medur Hamuy’s chest.”
The doctor froze yet again, this time her small mouth hanging open slightly.
Kenan cleared his throat. “Whenever you’re ready. Take a minute, if you need it. I have time.”
The round little Espani made several sounds as though she was beginning to speak and then suddenly forgot how.
“Kenan!” Syfax called out.
They both turned to look at him.
“Major?” Kenan beamed. “You’re all right! Are you all right? Are you hurt? You look a little tired.”
“I know how I look.” The major joined them and glared down at the woman in the green dress. “Aren’t you going to introduce me to your friend here?”
“This is Doctor Elena Medina. She’s the one who put the armor plate in Hamuy’s chest and the shock device in Ambassador Chaou’s arm.” Kenan folded his arms across his chest. “She was just about to start lying to me about how we’ve got it all wrong, that it’s all a big misunderstanding.”
“Good work. Any word on Chaou?” Syfax glanced around at the empty street.
“We haven’t seen or heard from her.”
“Well, she’s in town. I lost her at the South Station this morning and I’ve been running down leads all day. I heard that wealthy government types like this club, the Onyx. We should check it out.” Syfax jerked his head back toward the club doors.
“Actually, major, I tried that but I couldn’t get in.” Kenan pointed at the park across the avenue. “So I waited in the park to catch the doctor coming out. I saw every person who’s gone in since noon, and Chaou hasn’t been here.”
“She could have arrived before you did. Let’s go.” Syfax strode away.
Kenan hurried after him, dragging the doctor by the arm. “But major, they’ve got private security in there.”
“I don’t care.”
“Here, sir, at least take my gun.”
He frowned over his shoulder at the corporal. “Nah, you keep it. I’m just going to take a look around. Not planning to kill anyone today.” He fished the Persian’s brass knuckles from his pocket and slipped his fingers through the rings. The metal was warm.
Syfax shoved through the double doors of the Onyx Club over the shrill cries of the two little boys in matching blue suits. He made it halfway across the carpeted foyer before three young men with thick necks and bulging arms hustled through an open doorway on his left.
The major frowned at them. “You know who I am?”
One of the men shrugged. “No police, no marshals, no exceptions.”
Syfax tightened his fist around the brass knuckles. A gun might speed this up, but then they’ll get their own guns, and then we’ll need bigger guns, and then the bodies start stacking up in the street like cordwood. And no one wants that.
For a moment, he considered apologizing to them ahead of time. Instead, he lunged at the closest one and smashed his fist into his windpipe, sending him reeling back against the wall, choking and gasping. Then the other two grabbed his coat from behind.
The major yanked forward and down, whipping his arms free of his coat and his attackers. As the men stumbled toward him off balance, Syfax delivered a flurry of heavy-handed punches to their heads. On a better day, he might have been a blur of martial artistry, but today there was only strength, relentless and barely disciplined. He smashed his knuckles into jaws and ears and necks and eyes as hard and fast as he could, taking only a few of their wild swings to his own upper body. He didn’t feel them at all.
One guard toppled over backward and bounced his skull on the wall. The other took a roundhouse to the side of his head and spun as he dropped to the floor. The three guards sat or lay on the carpet, clutching their heads and chests, shuddering and coughing.
Syfax massaged his hands. “Sorry, fellas. Nothing personal.” He picked up his coat and slowly pulled it back on.
The two boys in blue hid outside the doors, peering at them with wide unblinking eyes. Kenan arrived in the doorway a moment later, still wrestling with the heavy-set doctor. Syfax jerked his head at the corridor leading into the club. “Come on. Try to keep up.”
Syfax strode down the hall glancing into the open doorways on either side and seeing richly furnished sitting rooms and sun rooms and dining rooms, all decorated in very different styles: classical Yoruba, modernist Igbo, industrial Mazigh, azure Songhai, imperial Eran. Even one that looked like a Hellan theater and one that resembled an Espani chapel. Some were occupied, and the women who noticed the marshal studying them frowned back rather intensely. Most of the rooms were empty.
Syfax left the corporal on the first floor and sprinted up a wide stair to the next level and repeated his search. And again above that, and again above that. Until finally he stood at the center of the lush greenhouse on the roof, sweating, alone.
When he returned to the foyer, he found Kenan holding back his coat to display his holstered gun to the angry, battered security guards. His other hand held the doctor against the wall.
“She’s not here. We’re leaving.” Syfax strode out into the fading afternoon heat and stood on the sidewalk, glaring at the nearly deserted street. He took the spare moment to put on his new Persian glasses with the blue tinted lenses, but found they’d been broken in his pocket so he tossed them to one of the little boys in blue, who called out, “Thanks, mister!”
