Open Sesame (7 page)

The job in the kebab house was simply to give him a cover and, of course, to help him keep body and soul together until the opportunity arose and he could have his revenge. That was, after all, why he was here. Or at least he presumed it was. As he lifted down the crate and raised the lid, it occurred to him that it would be as well to remember that. It was, he felt, something that might eventually slip his mind, if he wasn’t careful.

‘Cluck,’ said the hen.

‘Wait right there,’ Akram replied, and he darted into the back room to fetch the egg.

Three days after his escape from the palm-oil jar, he’d heard a rumour that Ali Baba had vanished. This information had left him very much in two minds. On the one hand he could forget all about it, make a fresh start and try and build a new life for himself somewhere far away. That was, he knew, the sensible thing to do - and completely impossible. Just because he’d escaped from his own particular story didn’t change the fact that he was a storybook character, and a villain into the bargain. You can get the character out of the story, but not the story out of the character; all his instincts and reflexes were conditioned - more than that; blow-dried, permed and set - in accordance with his Character. Even if he’d really wanted to run away and set up a little bicycle repair shop somewhere - was that what he really wanted? He really had no idea - he was no more capable of doing it than a lawyer of twenty years’ standing could say ‘That’s all right, mate, it’s on the house’ after a half-hour interview. The fact had to be faced; he had about as much free will as a trolley-bus, and that was how it would always be. Unless …

On the other hand - on the third finger of the other hand, to be exact - there was the matter of King Solomon’s ring. He’d seen for himself that it was tricksy, in a way that he couldn’t quite understand. It had changed the rules. It had broken the story. He wanted it.

When, on further investigation, he found that Ali Baba had taken the ring with him, along with a connoisseur’s collection of other magical hardware from the Thieves’ hoard, he realised that, as far as alternatives were concerned, he was driving a tram down a one-way street. He’d have to go after Ali Baba, kill him and take the ring. The ring was his only chance - no assurances, but he had to try, just in case the ring might be able to change stories and break patterns. And Ali Baba; he had no choice in that respect, either. As long as Baba was alive, the story wasn’t over. And it had to be murder, because that was the only sure way to deny him the happiness ever after that sealed the story and made it immutable. No earthly use to him Baba dying if it was in bed, fifty years later, in the bosom of his loving family and surrounded on all sides by wealth and good fortune. No; he had to get to Baba before he died in the course of Nature, and cut his throat. Neglect that, and he might as well find himself a large earthenware jar and wait for the hot water.

So here he was.

‘There you go,’ he said to the hen, and pointed. ‘Sit.’

The hen looked at him.

As well it might. The egg was, if anything, slightly bigger than the hen; it would have to sit astride the blasted thing, like a very small child on a very round pony. Well; if that was what it took…

He concentrated. He fixed the hen with his eye. Blood-crazed dervishes in old Baghdad had seen that look in Akram’s eye and immediately fled, packed in dervishing and become chartered surveyors. The hen blinked, swallowed twice and scrambled up onto the egg.

Here he was; and until he could find the bastard (which would take some doing; Reality, he’d discovered to his dismay, is big) there was nothing for it but to tuck in, keep his head down and earn a living. His old trade was out; this side of the border was far more complex and difficult to cope with than the simple world he’d come from, and under these circumstances a career as risky as thieving would be asking for trouble. But kebab houses are more or less the same on either side of the line; he’d seen the notice in Mr Faisal’s window, applied and got the job. For some reason, he felt prouder of that than, say, robbing the caravan of the Prince of Trebizond or stealing the Great Pearl from the palace of the Wazir of Cairo. The concept All my own work came into it somewhere; he was able to thieve because the story said he was a great thief, but when it came to slicing up reconstituted lamb, he was on his own.

‘Cluck,’ said the hen, clinging grimly to the shell with its claws. Akram listened, and heard a tiny tapping noise.

His game plan was simple. According to the fairy godfather, Ali Baba had gone into deep cover somewhere in the twentieth century. Because magic is rather conspicuous in modern Reality, he’d taken the sensible precaution of getting rid of most of his supernatural kit as soon as he’d used it for the purpose he’d originally brought it for. To be doubly sure that it wouldn’t turn up again later to plague him, he’d cunningly lodged each item where it would be guaranteed to be safe and out of anybody’s reach for ever and ever. He’d given the stuff - well, permanently loaned - to museums. The bottomless purse, the magic carpet, the plain, battered brass lamp, were trapped forever behind unbreakable glass, constantly guarded by bits of technology that made silly old magic look sick in comparison; one unauthorised finger coming within a metre would set off enough alarms to gouge great holes in the ionosphere. You had to admit, the man had class. Compared to the security he’d arranged for his souvenirs, the traditional secret cave guarded by hundred-headed dragons was tantamount to leaving the stuff out in the street under a notice saying PLEASE STEAL.

Tap, tap, tap. A hairline crack appeared in the shell. The hen squawked and closed its eyes.

It’s the mark of a truly great strategist that he attacks, not his enemy’s weaknesses (which are sure to be carefully guarded) but his strengths. What surer way to flush Baba out than to steal the relics? Doubly so, because Baba too was a victim of his genetic heritage; he’d been born a hero, just as Akram was a villain in the bone. When it became apparent that a dark and sinister force had invaded Reality and was scooping up magic weapons and instruments of unearthly power, the poor fool would have no choice in the matter at all; he’d have to come out and fight, just as a doctor can’t stop himself giving first aid to an injured man he comes across in the street, even if the man turns out to be a lawyer, policeman or Member of Parliament. And then it would just be a matter of—

Crack, went the eggshell. The hen glanced down, clucked wildly, slithered off the egg and made itself scarce, coming to rest under the vegetable rack. A moment later the two halves of the shell fell away, revealing the first phoenix ever to be hatched this side of the border.

Akram looked at the phoenix. The phoenix looked at Akram.

‘Hey,’ growled the bird, ‘just a cotton-picking minute.’

By the time it had finished saying that, of course, it had grown. From being the size of a small pigeon, it was already larger than a turkey, with power to add. Already its claws were as big as coathooks, its beak as long and sharp as a Bowie knife. Phoenixes mature fast; in less time than it takes to boil a half-full kettle they go from being cuddly, helpless infants to fully grown disturbed teenagers with antisocial habits and a pronounced weapons fetish. Imagine a stadiumful of Millwall supporters compressed into one streamlined, gold-feathered body seven feet tall at the wing, and you’re mind’s-eyeball to eyeball with a phoenix, age two minutes.

‘Gosh,’ said Akram, looking up. ‘Who’s a pretty boy, then?’

The phoenix regarded him with eyes like a Gestapo sergeant major’s. ‘You’re not my mummy,’ it said. ‘What gives around here?’

‘Would you like a sugarlump? Birdseed?’

‘I’ll have your liver if you don’t tell me what’s going on. Where’s my mummy?’

‘Ah,’ said Akram, ‘that’s rather a long story. You see, once upon a time, there was a man called Ali Baba …’

CHAPTER FIVE

‘Skip!’

No reply.

‘Skip! ‘

Echo sang back the word, adding her own trace element of mockery. Aziz flopped down on a ledge of rock near the mouth of the cave and scratched his head. The boss was nowhere to be found. He had gone, leaving a giant-sized hole in the Story. Although Aziz’s minuscule intelligence couldn’t begin to comprehend the vast implications of this, even he could feel that something was badly up the pictures and in urgent need of rectification.

Nature abhors a vacuum, preferring to clear up its loose ends with an old-fashioned carpet-sweeper. The loose ends thirty-nine of them, with all the cohesiveness and sense of purpose of the proverbial headless chicken - were doing their best, but it plainly wasn’t good enough. That’s what happens when you take both the hero and the villain out of a story. It’s a bit like removing the poles from a tent.

‘He’s not in the treasury,’ grunted Masood. ‘And his bed hasn’t been slept in.’

‘His camel’s still in the stable,’ added Zulfiqar. ‘And there’s no footprints in the sand, either. If he’s gone, he must have flown.’

Masood and Zulfiqar looked at each other. ‘The carpet,’ they said simultaneously.

Sure enough, it wasn’t there. Neither, of course, were the oil lamp, the phoenix’s egg, the magic sword, Solomon’s ring and half a dozen other supernatural labour-saving devices; Ali Baba had taken them with him to Reality. No way, of course, that the thieves could know that.

‘Why’d he want to do a thing like that?’ Aziz demanded.

‘Maybe it was something we said.’

Aziz frowned. Nominally the second-in-command of the band, he was fanatically loyal to Akram in the same way that the roof is loyal to the walls. ‘He wouldn’t just go off in a huff,’ he said. ‘Must be a reason. He’ll be off on a Quest or something, you mark my words. Give it a day or two and he’ll be back, with some priceless treasure snatched at desperate odds from its unsleeping guardian.’

Thoughtful silence.

‘Anybody looked to see if the Thrift Club kitty’s still there?’ asked Hanif. ‘Not,’ he added quickly, as Aziz treated him to a paint-stripping scowl, ‘that I’m casting whatsits, aspersions. Someone might just have a look, though.’

‘It’s still there,’ replied Saheed. ‘And the tea money. Beats me what can have happened to him. Unless,’ he added darkly, ‘he’s been kidnapped.’

‘Get real,’ snapped Mustafa, from behind his sofa-thick eyebrows. ‘Who’d be stupid enough to kidnap the Skip? It’d be like trying to lure a man-eating tiger by tying yourself to a tree. No, he’s gone off on a bender somewhere. Give it a couple of days and they’ll bring him home in a wheelbarrow.’

Another thoughtful pause; nearly a whole year’s ration used up in five minutes. The thieves were, after all, born henchmen.

Henchmen are, quite reasonably, designed for henching; thinking is something they wisely prefer to leave to the professionals.

‘Well,’ said Aziz, trying to appear nonchalant and laid back about the whole thing, and making a spectacularly poor job of it, ‘in the meantime, we’d better just carry on as normal. Agreed?’

Muttering. ‘Suppose so,’ Masood grunted uncertainly. ‘After all, caravans don’t rob themselves. What’s first up for today, anyone?’ ‘

There was an awkward silence, broken by Hanif saying, ‘Well, don’t look at me.’ Not that anybody had been, or was likely to, if they had any sense.

‘This is daft,’ said Zulfiqar. ‘I mean, we’ve been thieving and looting together, oh, I don’t know how long, we should all know the bloody ropes by now. It’s not exactly difficult, is it? We find someone with lots of money, we take it off him, and if he gets awkward we bash him.’

‘Yeah?’ Aziz retorted angrily. ‘All right, then, Clever Effendi, go on. Who’s the mark, where and when do we do the job, who does what, where do we fence the stuff afterwards? You don’t know, do you?’

‘So, maybe I don’t,’ Zulfiqar admitted. ‘All I’m saying is, we do this for a living, we should be able to work these things out from first principles. Like, where’s the best place to look for a lot of rich geezers?’

Mental cogs ground painfully. ‘Well,’ suggested Shamir, ‘what about the Wazir’s palace? Always a lot of wealthy toffs hanging around there.’

There was a chorus of Right-ons and Go-for-its, until someone pointed out that the palace was also the Guard headquarters, and known criminals who set foot within the precincts tended to end up with a marvellous view of the nearby countryside from the top of the City gate. All right, suggested another thief, what about doing over some of the shops in the Goldsmith’s Quarter? That seemed like a brilliant suggestion, until Aziz remembered that three-quarters of the goldsmiths paid Akram anti-theft insurance (‘If your premium is received within seven working days, you’ll be entitled to receive this fantastic combination coffee-maker/muezzin, absolutely free’) and unfortunately, what with the Chief doing all the paperwork and keeping the books, he hadn’t a clue which ones they were.

‘This is pathetic,’ observed Hanif, after an embarrassed hush. ‘Do you mean to say that without the Chief, nobody’s got the faintest idea what to do?’

Aziz nodded. ‘You only really appreciate people when they’re not there any more,’ he added sententiously.

Hanif shot him a glance suggesting that he’d relish the opportunity to appreciate Aziz a whole lot. ‘All right, then,’ he replied, ‘so we need a leader. Let’s choose a new one. Strictly temporary,’ he added quickly, ‘until the Boss comes home. Well, how about it?’

‘Like who?’

Awkward silence. It occurred to thirty-nine thieves simultaneously that (a) Hanifs suggestion was extremely sensible, and (b) whoever it was that got landed with the job of explaining how sensible it was to Akram when he returned, it wasn’t going to be him. When the topic of promotion in a bandit gang is discussed, the expression ‘dead men’s shoes’ tends to get used a lot, usually in the context of their being found in a pit of quicklime.

‘Well,’ said Zulfiqar, licking his dry lips, ‘there’s only one candidate, surely. I mean, who’s been Akram’s trusty right-hand man for as long as any of us can remember?’

Denials froze on thirty-eight lips. Suddenly, everyone was looking at Aziz. ‘Who, me?’ Aziz said, taking two steps backwards. ‘Now hang on a minute …’