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donkeys had managed to scratch grooves into both walls at once.
    “Wallet,” repeated the golem features. There was a dogged determination to his voice but his small eyes were clean. Whatever need he was feeding it wasn’t chemical. “Now.” He raised the knife slightly to show he was serious.
    “And I’ve already told you,” someone said, using ZeeZee’s voice, “he doesn’t have one.” Most people would have stepped back, away from the sharp blade. ZeeZee stepped in close, until he could see tiny broken veins on the man’s nose and smell stale garlic on his breath. It was definitely the man from the neighbouring queue at airport, and he was still staring at ZeeZee’s hair.
    “No wallet. No cash. And besides…” ZeeZee smiled. “If you need a knife, you’re batting in the wrong league…”
    The man opened his mouth.
    “No,” ZeeZee said firmly.
    Golem features shrugged. “Too bad,” he said. And then his blade whipped up, aimed at a point behind ZeeZee’s diaphragm—except that ZeeZee was already some place else. Pain blossoming across his side as he pivoted sideways to let the knife scrape across his ribs. Ugly but not life-threatening. The status report concerned his wound, ZeeZee realized, not his opponent.
    Dodging the next blow was easier. All ZeeZee had to do was pivot to take the putative knee to the groin on his hip.
    “You’re going to die,” said the attacker flatly, seeing ZeeZee’s gaze flick round the deserted and darkened alley.
    ZeeZee laughed.
    “I died years ago,” he said and unravelled in one fluid sweep, a sideways twist creating exactly the right amount of space to let him bring his palm up under the man’s chin, snapping back his skull so hard the sound of teeth breaking echoed off both alley walls. Without further hesitation, ZeeZee buried his forearm in a suddenly exposed throat and crushed the golem’s larynx.
    The follow-though, where ZeeZee’s elbow swept back to crack a skull and drop the man to the dirt was unnecessary, but he did it anyway. The old Rasta he’d learnt from had been very strict about always completing each sequence.
    In all, it took less than two seconds. And had there been anyone else in that alley to watch, which there wasn’t, they’d have been presented with moves so fluid, so controlled that they could have passed for some deadly ballet.
    “Shit,” said ZeeZee, blinking hard. Two courses of primal therapy, a complete twelve-point plan and three years of anger management straight down the drain. Personally, he blamed the fox.
    Under a blue blazer golem features carried a new ceramic Colt in a flashy leather shoulder holster, the fancy saddle-stitched kind with a chrome buckle just guaranteed to show up under a full body scan. So maybe he wasn’t such a professional after all.
    Apart from that, the idiot was clean, right down to labels cut out of his clothes and no keys of any description in any of his pockets. The only other thing of interest, was a Polaroid in a crumpled manila envelope. ZeeZee knew exactly what the shot would show even before he examined it. But he was wrong.
    He wasn’t the man in the photo staring out at the world through hooded eyes, because he’d never worn a goatee beard like that or had elegant hair swept back behind his ears. And he’d definitely never worn a drop pearl earring. But the man in the picture was him. The high cheekbones were his, the heavy nose, the whole shape of the face was the same, right down to his mouth.
    And in the background of the picture, just out of focus behind the man, was a soaring minaret outlined against a shockingly blue sky. The mosque to which the minaret was attached was impressive, heart-breakingly beautiful and undoubtedly famous but ZeeZee could honestly say he didn’t recognize it.
    Pocketing the Polaroid, ZeeZee rolled the body against a wall and left it there.
    “Head south towards the equestrian statue of Khedive Mohammed Ali, turn right at Place Manshiya and walk