The Power of Five Oblivion

you have anything to add?”
    “No, sir.” Farouk stood his ground and waited. He knew that there was no point in arguing or trying to raise a defence. The Field Marshall would have made up his mind before either of the two men had come into the room. Even so, the silence seemed to drag on for an eternity before he announced his decision.
    “Colonel Bassir,” he said. “I want you to assemble an execution squad in the parade ground. You will choose four of our most accurate riflemen … we cannot afford any more errors. Full ceremonial uniform.”
    “Yes, sir.”
    “And you can bring together a couple of regiments to witness the event. Shall we say one hour from now?”
    “Yes, sir.” Bassir hesitated. There was one detail missing. “Who is to be executed, sir?”
    “You are, Colonel Bassir.” Both men stared and Akkad went on quickly. “It is most unfortunate but this has been a serious blunder and you were the commanding officer. We have to make an example. That is all.”
    Bassir stood there, stunned. He tried to look at Farouk for help. But the other man turned away. Briefly, he thought of bringing out his own gun. It was there, hanging at his belt. No. That would be madness. In a way, Akkad had been generous to him. At least his death would be swift.
    “Thank you, sir.” Bassir saluted stiffly and left the room.
    “I want you to organize search parties, Major Farouk,” the field marshall continued as soon as the door had closed. “Speak to every informant. The girl must be in the city somewhere. Someone must know where she is.”
    “Yes, sir.”
    “And do make sure you find her soon. If there is any further failure in this matter, I will hold you personally responsible.”
    Farouk could barely speak. He spun on his heels and walked as quickly as he could out of the room.
    Akkad continued working until twelve o’clock, when it was time for afternoon prayer. He didn’t need to look at the clock. He knew instinctively by the length and the position of the shadows. He got up from behind his desk and dropped to his knees. But he did not face east. He faced south.
    Field Marshall Karim el-Akkad had once been a good Muslim. But the old religions were almost forgotten. Along with Christianity, Catholicism and Judaism they simply seemed … irrelevant. Akkad now prayed three times a day to his new master, to Chaos, the King of the Old Ones. And the best thing was that, unlike the old religions, his master answered back.
    As Akkad muttered prayers of loyalty and devotion, the lights seemed to go out in the room. The shadows lengthened and dragged him in. The sunlight disappeared from behind the windows. Suddenly it had become very cold. Outside, there was the roll of a drum and a sudden blast of gunfire. And, almost at the same time, he heard the voice whispering in the room and he was aware that there was someone – or something – standing very close behind him.
    “Find the girl,” it said. “I need her. I must have her. Find the girl and bring her to me. Find her now.”

FOURTEEN
    “They’ve started fighting again,” Richard said, listening to the gunfire coming from the west of the city.
    He had developed a sense of distance and direction so that he could more or less tell where a battle was taking place just by glancing at a map. He had not yet been allowed to leave the compound – it was considered too dangerous – and anyway, there would have been no point with the sandstorms blowing almost continuously, twenty-three hours out of twenty-four, turning every street into a dead end. He was puzzled about the storms. He’d never thought of Cairo as a particularly windy place and wondered if there had been a catastrophic shift in the weather patterns, perhaps a result of global warming. Was that another curse that the Old Ones had brought down on the planet? The strange thing was that nobody in the compound ever mentioned it. Like the war itself, the storms had been going on so long that they had come to be expected as a normal part of life.
    “Maybe it’s Samir and his men,” Scarlett said.
    “What time did he go out?”
    “About six this morning…”
    By now, they knew half a dozen of the commanders in this outpost of the rebel army. They were all young, in their twenties, and – unless they were on a special exercise – they dressed in ordinary street clothes, with a single red ribbon pinned to their top pocket. Red was the colour of the revolution. In ancient Egypt, it had