Busted Flush

He’s smiling, but I still have that visceral gut clench that affects every child when their parents display that kind of preternatural omniscience. It passes quickly. After all, I’m twenty-eight, and I amuse myself for a moment wondering what he thinks I’ve done. No pregnant fans. I’m a hermaphrodite, so I’m sterile. I’m not in debt. Both my public job and my secret job pay me quite well. What could he imagine I had done? For a moment I toy with the idea of telling him.

You know I’m a member of the Silver Helix, Dad, a division of MI-7. What you don’t know is that I’m their designated assassin. I don’t remember how many people I’ve killed. They say you never forget your first. His face is as blank as all the others.

But of course I don’t. Standing, I set aside the Bible and stretch. “Tea? There’s lemon tarts, and some boiled tongue for sandwiches. Will you eat something?”

“I’ll try.”

Our kitchen is small and cluttered, and several days’ worth of dishes form towers in the sink. A fat fly moves lazily between the trash can and the dirty dishes. The buzzing is almost hypnotic. No, no, no. A sharp head shake drives back the sleepiness. Looks like I’m going to have to hire a maid as well as a teenager.

The tongue, sullenly red and pimpled with taste buds, gleams with congealed fat under the refrigerator light. American kitchens are almost obscene with their gigantic refrigerators crammed with food. We English are starting to go the same way. Who has time to shop for each day’s meal that day?

I wonder who had cooked the tongue—certainly not my mother. She never cooked. My father took care of the house and the kid, and prepared every meal, and he fit every cliché about English cooking. A spurt of anger flares in the center of my chest, but I back down from it. It isn’t Mum’s fault he’s dying. She was the bread winner so I suppose she had the right to dodge the drudgery. But I suspect if she hadn’t worked she still wouldn’t have cooked and cleaned.

Her devotion to radical feminism has defined her life. Hell, she was so militant that she made damn sure I was raised as a boy. Now figure that one out. They may look funny, but I’ve got both sets of genitalia. I could have been raised as a girl, and even kept the same name, just changed the pronunciation.

My pager vibrates. I stand there juggling the tongue while I search through my pockets for the correct pager. I’m wearing a med-alert pager since I am so often away from England, and I have the pager my manager uses to arrange my performances, I have one from the Committee that summons Lilith, and another from Prince Siraj, the man that commands Bahir, and I have the one given to me by the Silver Helix. It’s Siraj calling.

Fuck you, says that febrile part of my mind. But I pull out my mobile and call him. Naturally he wants to see me. Naturally it has to be now. Naturally I’ll go.

The only reason it was the premier of the United Arab Emirates who received a visit from Bahir and not the president was due to an infelicitous exchange Al Maktoum had had with Prince Siraj in a Paris restaurant. The premier had mentioned how he liked to relax in a hot bath and watch the sun set through the floor-to-ceiling windows. Naked men are particularly vulnerable, and it’s easy to locate bathrooms on building plans. Add to that west-facing windows, and it was a simple matter for me to use Google Earth and locate my target. The time of day was a little less felicitous. I can’t use my powers at twilight or dawn, and Bahir cannot be summoned after dark. But Siraj’s recollection of the conversation suggested Al Maktoum liked to read in the tub prior to sunset. And I was delivering a threat, and they rarely take long.

The rippling water in the deep glass-tiled tub makes it hard to see clearly, but it appears the premier’s balls have retreated up into his belly. He stares up at me, and terror clouds his dark eyes. I risk a glance at the brace of mirrors on one wall of the marble-lined bathroom. I am a nicely terrifying figure, dressed in a black dishdasha with a pistol holstered on my hip. I had dispensed with the headdress. The trailing edges can interfere with peripheral vision, and in the desert heat my scalp sweats and itches. So my mane of red-gold hair shines under the lights. I use the tip of the scimitar to scratch at my beard. The premier never takes his eyes off that blade. I really wish that genius in operations at Whitehall who conceived of using my male avatar as a Middle Eastern ace hadn’t insisted on the sword as part of Bahir’s persona. It’s so absurdly Arabian Nights, but I’m stuck with it now. Bahir’s blade has decapitated a lot of people—including the last Caliph.