Open Sesame by Tom Holt Read Free Book Online Page B

He hoped it sounded sincere. His own optimism amazed him.
    ‘Thank you,’ replied the man, and his voice was like a huge rock rolling back into the mouth of an airtight tunnel. ‘And what can I do for you, Mister Thief?’
    ‘I want out, padrone.’
    The man’s eyebrows rose, and he took the cigar from his mouth; something which, a moment or so earlier, Akram would have sworn required surgery. ‘Out?’ he repeated.
    ‘Out of fairyland,’ Akram said. ‘I understand these things can be arranged. If anyone can do it,’ he added, ‘surely you can.’
    He’d said the right thing, apparently, because the man smiled. It wasn’t a pretty sight. ‘Maybe,’ he replied. ‘Maybe I can do all sorts of things.’
    ‘Thank you, padrone.’
    ‘I didn’t say I could,’ the man said. ‘But supposing I did, what then?’
    Careful, said a voice in the back of Akram’s brain. This is where you have to leave one lung and your liver as security. ‘Naturally,’ he said, ‘I’d be eternally grateful.’
    ‘Of course.’ The man shrugged. ‘That’s only to be expected. And who knows?’ he went on. ‘Maybe one day, you could do me a favour, like the one I’m doing you now. I don’t know, it may be next year, it may be in twenty years, it may be never. Who can predict these things?’
    Akram smiled weakly. He felt rather as if he’d just handed a signed blank cheque to a lawyer and said he didn’t care how much it cost, it was a matter of principle. ‘A favour for a favour. What could be fairer than that?’
    ‘Or rather,’ said the man, and the smile vanished from his face, ‘three favours. Three wishes. You understand me?’
    ‘You want me to grant you three wishes?’
    There was a cold silence, and Akram had that ghastly feeling of knowing you’ve said something crass without having a clue what.
    ‘No,’ said the man. ‘You ask me for three wishes. When the time comes, you’ll understand. Thank God,’ he added, ‘I only got one daughter. Paulo, Michele, see to it, and get this bufone out of my sight. Next.’
    Half an hour later, a small yellow lorry chugged through the checkpoint into Reality. In the back of the lorry was a load of well-rotted phoenix guano, a permitted inter-world export destined for the asparagus beds of Saudi Arabia. Under it, and reflecting bitterly on the appropriateness of it all, was a tall, gaunt man with a passport in the name of John Smith.
    Self-consciously, the plot thickened.

CHAPTER FOUR
    Alistair Barbour, blameless dentist of quiet life and regular habits, sat in his reception room. Outside, Southampton was waking from its night’s sleep like a hung-over giant, and a milk float whined like a resentful bee towards Mafeking Terrace. The distant sound blended with the hum of the steriliser and the ominous grumbling of the coffee-machine to produce background music as reassuring as it was mundane. Mr Barbour—
    Well no, he admitted to people rude enough to ask, that wasn’t actually his real name; his real name was something Middle Eastern and tiresome to pronounce, and he’d chosen
    A. Barbour just so as to be near the front in the Yellow Pages.
    Mr Barbour opened the newspaper. He bought it for the waiting room, but if there was time he liked to glance through it himself before the first punters showed up. Not that he ever seemed to take any interest in current events; it was as if he somehow didn’t feel involved in what was going on around him, and people tended to attribute this to his being Foreign. He didn’t vote in elections, either, although he always claimed that this was because voting only encouraged them.
    Nothing on the front page - doom, death, dearth and disaster, Labour MP’s with their paws in the till, Tories with their trousers down - seemed to engage his interest, and he gave the impression of a man who’s wasted his five bob as he skimmed the foreign and business sections. Stubble-chinned, crumpled-collared hacks, ferreting and scribbling away in