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saw the disbelief in Yacoub's face. "Lovat had a profession," he explained. "A career in the diplomatic service. How far would he progress if he incurred the enmity of a senior government minister like Saville Ryerson?"

"Would he exercise his influence to save her?" Yacoub asked uncertainly.

"Yes!" It was Pitt's turn to state what was so plain to him, and apparently unknown to Yacoub. "Ryerson has already committed himself to help her in Lovat's death, even at the risk of being sent to trial for it himself. He would hardly balk at warning off a young man whose attentions were unwelcome. A word to his senior in the diplomatic service and Lovat would be finished."

Yacoub still looked doubtful.

Around them in the dining room the buzz of conversation ebbed and flowed. A beautiful woman with fair hair and a porcelain complexion laughed, throwing her head back so the light caught her. Her companion gazed at her in fascination. Pitt wondered if it was a romance she would not have dared entertain at home. Was this greater freedom something Yacoub imagined to exist in British society? How could Pitt explain that it was not?

Yacoub looked down at his plate. "You don't understand," he said quietly. "You really know nothing about her."

"Then tell me!" Pitt begged. He nearly added more, then bit it back. He could see the struggle in Yacoub's face, the need to fight for some justice, to see truth destroy ignorance, and at the same time the deep need of a private person not to betray the secrets of another's passion or pain.

Again, Pitt tried to think of an argument that would win, and again he kept silent.

Yacoub pushed his plate away and reached for his glass. He sipped from it very slowly, then put it down and looked at Pitt. "Ramses's father Alexander was one of the leaders fighting to govern our own affairs when our debts ran out of control under the Khedive Ismail, before he was deposed and his son Tewfik put in his place, and Britain took over management of Egypt's financial affairs. He was a brilliant man, a philosopher and scholar. He spoke Greek and Turkish as well as Arabic. He wrote poetry in all of them. He knew our culture and our history, from the pharaohs who built the pyramids at Giza, through all the dynasties to Cleopatra, the Greco-Roman period, the coming of the Arabs and the law of Mohammed, the art and the medicine, the astronomy and the architecture. He had strength and he had charm."

Pitt did not interrupt. He had no idea if what Yacoub was saying was going to mean anything in the murder of Edwin Lovat, or if Narraway could use even a shred of it, but it fascinated him because it was part of the story of this extraordinary city.

"He could make you see the magic in the gleam of moonlight on marble shards a thousand years old," Yacoub went on, turning the goblet in his fingers. "He could bring back the life and the laughter of the past as if it had never really left, simply been overlooked for a space by people too insensitive to perceive it. With him you could see the colors of the world, hear music simply in the wind over the sand. The smell of dirt and sewage, the flies in the street, the mosquitoes, were only the breathing of life."

"And Ayesha?" Pitt asked, afraid already of the answer.

"Oh, she loved Alexander Ghali," Yacoub replied, his mouth twisted a little sideways. "She was young, and honor was dear to her. She loved her country too, and its history, its ideas, but she loved the people and hated the poverty which kept them ignorant when they could have learned to read and write, and kept them sick when they could have been well."

Pitt waited. He knew from the suppressed emotion in Yacoub's face, the shadows in his eyes, that the story was only half told, if that.

Yacoub took up the thread again. He had stopped only to regain control of his feelings so they did not show so nakedly in his face.

"He was a man of almost infinite possibilities," he said quietly. "He would even have given Egypt back her independence and financial integrity. But he was flawed. He indulged his family. He gave his sons and his brothers power, and they were greedy for themselves. He was a man who fed on the beautiful things of the heart and the mind, but he