HARRY SAW EMMA INTO A taxi and headed off alone. He told her that he had something he had to get done, and he didn’t want their time to be ended by a return to the gritty edge. Not that he didn’t trust her or know she could handle things. Emma must have understood, or was simply too filled with the night to press. Because she kissed him again, a lingering good-bye that melted his words. He stood on the sidewalk a long time after the taxi pulled away, smelling her perfume and the scent of her hair, feeling her arms and her strength. Waiting until the sensations had dimmed enough for him to put them away. Tuck them into that carefully guarded compartment. The one that had stayed empty for far too long.
He drifted along a road that was little more than an alley yet bound on both sides by every variety of shop. The people were poor, the city was just one crumbling step above squalid, yet there were thousands of these little stores. He could outfit an expedition along this one road, all from shops smaller than a walk-in closet. He took his time, buying items that had often been useful in bygone days. A coil of lightweight rope, a pair of high-impact flashlights, a mountaineer’s hammer, a knife with a carbon-steel blade, a Swiss-army pocket knife, a professional backpack to replace the cheap one he had bought in Larnaca, a box of energy bars, and just-add-water meals. He loitered and he dickered and he kept shooting glances back behind him. Not because he expected to be followed. Because he needed to refocus. Be ready. For whatever. If not now, when the danger came. Because it would. Harry had no illusions about that. None whatever.
His destination was midway between the harbor and the castle, where his alley joined with a more upscale tourist avenue. The shop occupied two angles of the transition zone and had a banner that read OMDURMAN CAFÉ, ULTRA HI-SPEED. The windows were taped over with fly-blown posters of warriors in armor and women in fur bikinis, both wielding light sabers and watched over by bearded magicians.
The guy behind the counter had deep acne scars and an abdomen twice the size of his slumping shoulders, as though he had spent so long on his stool all his weight had shifted south and congealed. Harry leaned over the counter and shouted what he wanted against the roar of acid rock.
The guy didn’t even blink. “You got money?”
Harry showed him a fifty. “One now, another when I get what I’m after.”
“I know just the man you want.”
“He’s here?”
“Every night he has leave, he is here. Same time, same channel.”
“Go talk to the guy and see if he’s interested in a little business.”
“He owes me big-time. He is interested.” The guy held out his hand. “You pay, Joe.”
“Sorry, Abdul. First you chat, then I hand you the bill.”
The guy shrugged and shifted his weight off the stool. He walked through the double row of computers and leaned over the corner station. He shouted into the ear of a gamer who didn’t glance up from the screen.
The proprietor’s gut jiggled as he returned up the central aisle. “The money. Now.”
Harry handed him the fifty. “What’s his name?”
“Turgay.”
“You sure he speaks English?”
The proprietor was already settling his bulk back onto his stool. “You go talk, you see.”
Light from the street filtered through a second set of inward-facing posters. Walking down the central aisle was like swimming through reddish soup. About half the computer terminals were in use. The players all wore headsets and chattered as fast as they typed. Nobody paid Harry any attention. They were lost in their worlds of swarming gremlins and universal war. The atmosphere buzzed with tension and fatigue. The computers were high-end, the flatscreens big as television panels. The walls were bare, the floor grimy. The only clock these players worried about was the one counting out their cash. This was definitely not a place where tourists came to check their e-mails.
The guy in the corner was the same as the others, only with shorter hair. “You Turgay?”
“Hang tight, my man. Be with you in a jiff.”
At least the proprietor had been right about the language. “You’re stationed at the military compound outside Yayla?”
“Been there a thousand years. Or six months. Take your pick.” His fingers blurred over the keypad. “Can’t talk now. Ten minutes max.”
Harry reached over and switched off the computer. “For five hundred bucks, my man, you will listen now.”