He understood this now. Jake wasn't going to be Moz's ticket out of Marrakech after all, because Moz no longer wanted a way out unless it included Malika. What he wanted walked beside him into Gueliz dressed in a stolen haik, her sandals slapping angrily on the dusty pavement.

"Idries is irrelevant," said Moz. "And I didn't say we should be friends with Hassan. I said we needed a truce."

"You said peace."

Peace, truce... Moz was about to say, What's the difference? Then he thought it through. "I meant truce," he said. "You don't have to like Hassan. But I want to stop having to avoid him."

"You don't avoid Hassan," protested Malika.

Moz looked ashamed. "That's not true," he said. "I've been avoiding him my whole life."

"You came," said Idries, and Hassan glanced at his bag carrier. It was a slight glance, so quick that neither Moz nor Malika really bothered to wonder what it meant. This was a mistake, although how much of a mistake Moz only realized later and by then it was too late.

Of course, Hassan might not really have glanced at Idries. Moz might only have imagined this in Amsterdam, when he was digging through all the memories that refused to stay buried.

"Why would they not come?" said Hassan, his voice arrogant. He nodded abruptly to Moz and would have ignored Malika completely had she not reached forward to feel the lapel of his suit.

"Nice cloth," Malika said, managing to make it sound like an insult.

Moz laughed.

This was the point Hassan should have thrown them out, stood up and punched Moz or said something cutting, but he only sat back in his chair and pulled out a wallet, counting ten-dollar bills onto the table. The total got to forty dollars before Hassan shrugged, casually added one more to the pile and slipped his wallet back inside his jacket.

"Fifty dollars," he said.

It was an incredible sum in a city where an entire family could work for a month and earn nowhere near that.

"Half now," said Hassan, "and half later." Pulling a small cigarillo from a leather case, he waited for Idries to produce a lighter. It was brass overlaid with chrome, the name of some Essaouria nightclub in enamel along one side. "We can meet at Café Lux afterwards."

"After what?" Malika demanded.

"After you deliver this." Hassan lifted a plastic bag onto the café table. "I'm glad you came," he added, sounding almost sincere. "I would have been very unhappy if you hadn't."

"Tough shit," said Malika, but she said this under her breath.

"What's in it?" That was Moz.

Idries snorted. "You don't want to know."

"We do," said Malika, "don't we?" She looked at Moz, who scowled, although it was at Hassan for raising his eyebrows.

"Anyway," Idries said. "Kif isn't drugs." He sounded amused at the idea. "And you don't have to go far."

"Where?" said Moz and Hassan named a café on Rue Arabe about fifteen minutes south of where they sat.

"Malika can be your sister," Idries suggested. His grin when he said this was less than kind.

"Not me," Malika said. "He wants to take it, he can take it..." There was a scrape as she pushed back her chair. "I'm going home."

"You can keep all the money," said Moz, her gaze stripping all the bravado from his offer. "Please," Moz added.

Malika sighed. "Who do we ask for?"

"You don't ask for anyone," said Hassan. "You leave this bag under a table at the back, near the left-hand corner." He held up his left hand, so they both understood which one he meant. "A friend will collect it after you're gone."

"And if someone's using the table?"

"The table will be free," Hassan said. He sounded very certain about this...

Malika carried the plastic bag in one hand, swinging it gently so it looked like shopping. And they talked as they walked, about the things Malika and Moz always talked about: the Mellah, Malika's mother, how weird it must be to have a normal family like Hassan's.

Somewhere after the Church of St. Anne and before the green wrought-iron railings and neat flowerbeds of the Jardin de Hartai they passed two police cars parked in a side street outside a half-built hotel, windows down, their occupants listening to what sounded like static on a radio.

Café Impérial was where Hassan said it would be, between two of the new hotels and backing onto a slightly tatty French-built office block, and the table was empty. "I'll do it," Malika said. "They'll notice you."

No one stopped her from entering and few noticed when she left. No one came to collect the bag. The next person to use the table kicked it under a bench. He was still sitting there when it exploded.

"I see," said Petra Mayer. In front of her, fanned out on Prisoner Zero's floor, were the contents of the Marrakchi police file. The worst of the Cimetière Européen crime-scene photographs showed an adolescent girl, the marks of a swollen ligature around her neck. Slash marks on the torso had been matched to a lock knife found at the scene. The fingerprints on the handle of the knife were those of the man in front of her.

Petra Mayer reread the arrest warrant, although she already knew it by heart. It charged Marzaq al-Turq with the rape and murder of Malika, daughter of Sidi ould Kasim.

"And the knife was the one you'd used to cut her ropes. That's why your fingerprints are on it."

"The Major's knife," Prisoner Zero said. "Not that it makes any difference. I still killed her."

Petra Mayer had to agree. "You know," she said, looking at the file. "I can think of several good reasons why it might be better for all of us if you remained Jake."

CHAPTER 54

Lampedusa, Wednesday 11 July [Now]

Stubbing out her cigarette, Petra Mayer looked round the room that now made do as Prisoner Zero's cell. She'd been talking since noon and getting nowhere.

"Look," she said, "let's go back to basics. There's been a forty-eight-hour stay of execution and the President agrees to meet. Okay?"

She put a neatly printed appeal for clemency in front of Prisoner Zero and offered him a pen. All the man had to do was sign the thing.

"Jake," Professor Mayer said crossly. "You've got what you wanted, all right? He's going to fly across to inspect the USS Harry S. Truman and while he's over here he'll come and talk to you, I promise."

That the President also wanted this meeting Petra Mayer left aside. Gene Newman had given her only two instructions: proceed on the basis that Prisoner Zero was Jake Razor and find out why the man needed to talk to him. The darkness thought it would be a good idea did not constitute a reason.

Petra Mayer knew exactly why the President intended to pardon Prisoner Zero. He needed Europe on his side in his refusal to sign a joint space accord with China until Beijing sorted out its human rights issues.

Sort out the human rights and he'd sign off billions of dollars for a joint mission into space. Refuse, and Beijing could go it alone. As if that was going to happen... It was a tricky position to take and "Killing Einstein," as the First Lady now billed the Prisoner Zero problem, was not going to help impress Europe.

"Did you hear what I said?"

Nodding, the prisoner leant forward to pick up Professor Mayer's pen, flipped over the appeal for clemency and began to sketch a squat tower on the back.

"Concentrate," Petra Mayer suggested.

Dark eyes looked up from the paper. "Believe me," said Prisoner Zero. "I'm trying to."

On her chair in the corner, Katie Petrov scrawled a note in her book, ripped out the page as quietly as possible and stood up to pass it to Professor Mayer. Reassurance?