The Giant's Almanac, Andrew Zurcher [accelerated reader books txt] 📗

‘For his sake, I mean. I recognized him at once, the moment I saw him through the window.’

‘You recognized him,’ said Clare. Fitz knew the shape of her voice; her arms were still crossed, and she would be staring sceptically across them.

‘Yes. I don’t know how it’s possible –’ Dr More was scrambling. ‘No, it’s just too strange to make any sense at all – but it was obvious to me. As plain as ink on paper.’

The thoughts in Fitz’s head swirled, flying before him like rooks in a gale.

‘Look, I’m bumbling around out here – it’s been a long night – but the truth is, I think he is in danger,’ said Dr More. ‘Very great danger. Perhaps you both are.’

With his fingertips pressed against the wall to try to take the weight off his feet, Fitz inched closer to the front room, until he could just make out Ned More’s face through the crack between the door and its frame.

‘I think we were in fairly serious danger last night,’ retorted Clare. Her voice had cooled; now it clanged like iron.

‘Last night –?’ Ned seemed puzzled. Or maybe he feigned it.

‘Was that you beating at the door?’ asked Clare. She didn’t usually tolerate sneering, from anyone, but this tone and curl seemed to well up out of her lips neither bidden nor checked. ‘Was that you threatening me? Or was it a friend of yours? How many of you are there?’

The colour drained out of Dr More’s face. Fitz had read about this in books. It was one of those symbolic and exaggerated descriptions to which writers turned, when they wanted to express a character’s dismay or fear. He had always thought it was a bit like one of his embellishments – the sort of thing you wished into possibility, because it made for such a good story. But here, here in the front room of the cottage, it happened. The young man, still bathed from behind in the dappling brilliance of the late-summer sun, turned absolutely, chalky white.

‘What kind of danger are we in?’ said Clare. Ned’s stunned silence had obviously convinced her of his sincerity; where before her tone had been menacing, now she sounded matter-of-fact, honest.

‘If Professor Sassani is here,’ said Ned, quietly, ‘I think your lives could be at risk. I believe he has killed before.’

‘Tell me what you know, then,’ she said. ‘Quickly.’ And she sat at the table, putting her hands out in front of her, where Fitz could see them. She had interlaced her fingers, and was gripping them hard, in a tight ball. ‘My son will be back soon from the neighbour’s, and I don’t want him to hear a word of this. Why have you come to my house, and what do you want with him?’

‘I’ll have to start pretty far back,’ he said.

‘Then do,’ she answered.

There were brushes lying all over the house. Clare liked it that way, because the decision to paint was one that she preferred to take capriciously. She often painted with watercolours in this front room, especially in summer when the light flooded in through the large window, and the garden and lane beyond were deep with thousands of shades of green. No one ever purchased her green paintings, but she did them in their hundreds; some of the oil canvases she had painted five, even six times. Now she took up a delicate brush and dipped it in the jug, and as Ned talked, she painted – thick strokes of deep black – across a scrap of heavy paper that lay handy.

After graduating from university with a degree in Middle Eastern Studies, Ned More said, he had been asked to join an army mission to support archaeologists in Iraq. The Americans had sacked Baghdad, and in the disorder a great number of archaeological treasures had been stolen from the museum there, and from collections and sites across the country. This was a crime. The looters had been organized. They had known what they wanted, and they had taken some of the most valuable and most beautiful objects – statues and carvings, coins and jewels that were two and three thousand years old. European scholars, who knew the collections well, made plans to go to Iraq to support their colleagues in trying to clear up the mess, and to protect what was left. Young More was proposed by the master of his college at Cambridge, a retired diplomat, as an able and obliging sort – and, besides, he was a fluent speaker of Arabic who might prove very helpful to the group. And he was an orphan. And he hadn’t yet found a job. Despite the danger, Ned had quickly resolved to go.

An orphan.

The expedition was a failure: thwarted by security problems, fighting and violence in many areas of the city, and in the whole country; the archaeologists and historians who had flown out from Paris never even set foot in the capital’s National Museum. After two weeks they returned home, disappointed and frustrated. But even though he had not once left the hotel, and notwithstanding the failure of the expedition, something remarkable had happened to Ned – something he had kept entirely secret.

Early one morning, hours before the others had woken or come down to eat, an old man had sat down next to him in the lobby of the hotel. Ned was reading an old newspaper. The old man was grizzled and apparently very poor. He wore only a dirty cotton thawb, the long common robe usual in the city. His face was cracked and leathered from the sun, and some of the lines that crossed his cheeks showed dirt. Ned admitted he had at first been worried, and looked to the guards standing duty inside and outside the hotel’s front door. But the man behaved like a king fallen on hard times, and he spoke flawless English. What he said, and did, astonished the young