So I said nothing. She was my wife, and I was her husband, and that was all that we needed to know.

It lasted six years, in which my wife lived with me in wealth–wheat, cotton and boys being profitable markets at nearly any time, and there the matter may have rested, until the French came to Cairo. When the rage of the Egyptians against their remarkably moderate oppressors grew too great, conspirators came to my door, asking for arms, influence, money–all of which I politely refused.

“Your city is held by the infidel!” they exclaimed. “How long until a Frenchman violates your wife?”

“I really couldn’t say,” I replied. “How long did it take until they violated yours?”

They left, muttering against my impiety, but their comings and their goings were already being watched, and when the revolt began and the cannon fired and the heavens cracked and Napoleon himself gave the order to blast down the walls of the Great Mosque and massacre every man, woman and child who had taken refuge inside, my name was called in the round-up of the living dead amid the thunder-blasted carnage of the Cairo streets.

The teenage boy, now grown to a man, whose body I had first inhabited when I came to inspect the household of al-Mu’allim came running to me. “Master,” he exclaimed, “the French are coming for you!”

My wife stood by, silent and straight. I turned to her, said, “What should I do?” and meant the question, for to become some French officer–the obvious recourse–would in that single breath, that second of transition, end the life I had, all that I had lived to obtain. “What should I do?”

“Al-Mu’allim must not be found in this city,” she replied, and it was the first time in six years that she had looked at me, but spoken my body’s name. “If you remain, the French will take you and kill you. There are boats on the river; you have money. Leave.”

“I could return…”

“Al-Mu’allim must not be found,” she repeated, a flash of anger pushing at her voice. “My husband is too proud and lazy to run.”

It was the closest she had come to admitting my nature, for though her fingers were in mine, her breath mixed with my breath, she spoke of my body as if it were some other place.

“What about you?”

“Bonaparte wants, even now, to prove that he is just. He puts up signs across the city, which proclaim ‘Do not put your hopes in Ibrahim or Muhammad, but put your trust in he who masters empires and creates men.’ ”

“That doesn’t inspire me to believe in anything,” I replied.

“He will not murder a widow. Our servants, wealth and friends will protect me.”

“Or make you a target.”

“I am only in danger while al-Mu’allim remains!” she retorted, the tendons pressing against her neck as she swallowed down a shout. “If you love me–as I think you do–then go.”

“Come with me.”

“Your presence here brings me danger. Your… who you are brings me danger. If you love me, you would not bring me harm.”

“I can protect you.”

“Can you?” she replied sharply. “And who are you to protect me? Because my husband could not do so much, even if he loved me enough to try. When all this has ended, perhaps you may come back to me, in some other shape.”

“I am your husband…”

“And I your wife,” she replied. “Though never before has either of us had need to say it.”

Ayesha bint Kamal.

She stood upon the banks of the river, one hand across her belly, a blue scarf across her head, her back straight and the serving boy crying silently at her side.

I left her as Cairo thundered to the roar of infidels.

Leaving is one of the few things I am good at.

Chapter 29

In 1798 by the banks of the Nile I wore the body of a man whose life no longer interested me. The waters of the river spilt out into the long grass until you believed that the water was without end, drowning the earth.

I took al-Mu’allim south, far from the French as they battled Mameluke cavalry before the slopes of the Pyramids. My body grew thin, my nails began to yellow and I would have abandoned it then and there, for it disgusted me, a withering corpse. Then I remembered my wife, and my oath to keep her husband safe, and I clenched my fists and lowered my eyes, and kept going.

Though the French were far from the higher reaches of the Nile, yet even here their deeds were condemned by the cataract-eyed imams, who cried, infidel, infidel, they violate us, they violate Egypt! The further from Cairo I went, the more violent the rumours became. The city was burned; the city was lost. Every woman was raped, every child butchered on the steps of the mosque. After a while I gave up contradicting the tales, as my veracity only served to mark me out as a traitor to the jihad rising in the sands.

I headed towards the coastal mountains of Sudan, until I came at last to the Red Sea where it looked out towards Jeddah. There, as news of a great naval defeat came whispering down the waters, I sat to watch the ocean and resolved at last to make a change.

There were few ports along the western coast of the Red Sea, but the battles in the desert and the chaos at the mouth of the Nile, where Nelson had shattered the French fleet, created a buzz among the tiny fishing craft and semi-piratical lateen-sailed skiffs. Excellent profits were made as they shipped, stole and scuppered war goods heading north towards the Mediterranean. One ship in particular caught my eye, an ancient schooner long past its retirement day. Its captain was a grinning Dinka chief, with a great sword on his belt and two pistols slung with piratical glee across his chest. His crew were as multicultural a melange as I had ever seen, from his Genoan lookout to the Malaysian pilot, who communicated through a mixture of poor Arabic, reasonable Dutch and obscene gesticulation. Of most interest to me, however, was the one passenger they were carrying for their crossing to India, who stood silently at the prow of the ship in a cloak of black, studying the waters and saying not a word.

He was a man barely into his twenties, tall and lean with perfect ebony skin, well-muscled arms and coiled black hair, who held himself aloft with the glory of a prince and was, upon interrogation of the crew, revealed to be precisely that: a prince of the Nuba travelling to India on a diplomatic mission.

“Does anyone know him?” I asked. “Does he have family or servants in attendance?”

No, no one knew him, except by reputation, and he had come to the ship without servants but with a vast quantity of cash. His personality was a closed book; his history, doubly so. It was with this in mind that I, still in the body of al-Mu’allim, followed him, the night before sailing, into the tiny port town. I trailed him between the crooked mud houses of the cliff-clinging streets, reached out to touch him on his arm, and as I went to jump, heard in my head the screaming of vampire bats, felt tiny vessels bursting behind my eyes, tasted iron on my tongue, and as I fell back, gasping from the attempt, the beautiful prince turned, his face also drained of blood, and exclaimed, in flawless Arabic:

“What the hell are you doing?!”

Chapter 30

Restless sleep, restless memories in an anonymous hotel room in…

where, precisely?

Bratislava.

What in God’s name am I doing in Bratislava?

Sleeping on top of a file that dissects the life of the entity known as Kepler. Rolling in sheets pulled too tight across the bed that wrap themselves around the body of the murderer called Coyle. I’d burned the Turkish passport, scattered the ashes down the toilet. I’d always known that I’d have to ditch an identity eventually; I was simply waiting to find out which one.