‘You must understand that many millions of his subjects — simple, illiterate people who know no better — believe their Ruler to be a divine power. They fear him, but they love him. And it would be very bad for the morale of the nation if it were learned that the Chief of NAZAK, which was the Ruler’s right arm, had turned and slaughtered his master. Therefore it is necessary to find — what is called in English, I think — a scapegoat.’
She felt a cold creeping terror from the bowels up to the nape of her neck. ‘Me?’
Shiva Steiner’s mouth creased into a saurian grin. ‘Considering the amount of money you have been paid for tonight, for doing absolutely nothing, I think it both apt and convenient that you should take both the credit and the blame.’
‘Blame?’
‘Why not? You agreed to commit murder. In most countries, including your own, that is a crime in itself.’
‘You can’t kill me!’
‘Of course not, my dear. When the fighting has stopped, you will escape. Your arrest and trial would only lead to embarrassing complications with your country’s government at a time when our new regime will need to be on the best terms with all the Western nations.’
He turned to go. She leaned out, with a puzzled, frightened gesture, as though to grab his sleeve. ‘Shiva, please!’ Her voice became a weak shout. ‘How do I escape?’
‘My dear, do not be foolish. We have discussed the plan in detail. If he has done as instructed, your friend Capitaine Packer will be waiting for you at the corner of Passam Street. It will take you no more than ten minutes to walk.’
‘But I was supposed to be there at midnight!’ She glanced frantically at her watch: it was 1.10. ‘And if I wait until the fighting’s over, I’m going to be hours late.’
‘My dear, you are not the only one whose plans have been disturbed by the events of tonight. Your friend has no doubt been held up himself by the fighting. However, if he fails to reach his rendezvous, then that is simply a misfortune with which I cannot help you. In the meantime, one of my officers will take you to a private apartment where you can make yourself comfortable until it is safe for you to leave.’
CHAPTER 41
Packer had tried rolling down the Range Rover windows, but it did nothing to relieve the heat, and only brought with it the smell: a burnt bitter-sweet smell of cordite and shell-smoke, scorched stone and dust, and the clammy foetid stench of roasted flesh.
It was not until past nine in the morning that he had been let through the roadblocks outside the city, and then only after protracted conversations on field telephones. He had reached the commercial centre of the city shortly after ten. The streets were lifeless, deserted. Trucks, jeeps, and armoured cars stood crashed, abandoned, burnt out, amid the litter of human debris on which the flies were already settling in glistening swarms. It looked like some obscene playground.
Near the corner of Passam Street, a couple of personnel carriers stood locked together in a tangle of crushed, blackened steel, their wheels burned to the rim, their crews scattered along the sidewalk — a row of tiny charred figures lying on their backs with their arms and legs drawn up in the air, their bones sprouting like bamboo shoots from the cobweb ashes of their uniforms, teeth grinning at the sky. One of them had escaped the flames and lay further up the street, a coil of silvery intestine wound out beside him, still steaming in the heat, while two bald dogs were already setting to with their fangs.
Packer backed up the street, far enough to be out of sniper range from any of the buildings leading to the Palace Square. He took a tepid drink from the plastic canteen, rinsed out his mouth, opened the door and spat into the street, where the water bubbled and shrank into a dusty gob and disappeared.
The heat was so intense that he was having to breathe slowly, between panting gasps, like an asthmatic. Through the aching glare the city had a bleached naked look, with every window smashed, as dark as empty eye sockets, walls blistered and blasted, balconies hanging down like broken jaws. Behind, the minarets rose in shimmering clusters — gold and pink tulips thrusting their way up from the scrap-heap.
He leaned against the wheel, the plastic cover slimy under his fingers, the sweat stinging his eyes, itching down the backs of his legs. For twenty minutes nothing happened. Nothing at all, except the ghastly canine meal behind him. He wanted to get out and put an end to the creatures with the MI6 which still lay under the seat; but he feared that the least sound of gunfire would at once arouse the city to further fury. For the moment it was as though Mamounia had been stunned.
Packer now felt a new, strange sense of unease — something that was oddly at variance with the untimely chaos of the night. He was still uncertain of exactly what had happened, except that his final passage had been remarkably, uncannily smooth. Even at the four roadblocks in the centre of the city, which had been manned by hard, battle-weary troops, there had always been an officer ready to check his credentials on a telephone or radio, and to let him through.
His brain felt clogged and
