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position. Distance was needed to take in the scale of the Dunetech building. It dominated the entire south-facing end of the square, rising at least ten storeys higher than the shabby concrete office blocks on either side. Blue-tinted mirror glass burnished all four walls, gleaming in the mid-afternoon sun as though God had just finished buffing it with His own chamois leather.
    Spike watched his reflection elongate as he approached. The revolving doors were mirrored, the Dunetech logo etched above them in a tastefully discreet font. It didn’t need to be any larger; the point had been made.

Chapter 12
     
    Spike sat on a cream-coloured sofa at the edge of a cavernous atrium. The Dunetech headquarters had a hollow centre, offices rising up around the sides, fewer than might have been expected from outside. Three potted palm trees stretched towards a skylight roof, newly arrived, judging by their greenness. The floor was of black polished limestone, the desk manned by a deeply tanned girl sporting excessive lipgloss. Behind her, an electronic turnstile protected a bank of glass-fronted lifts.
    The receptionist shot Spike a smile. He’d been sitting for ten minutes and not a phone had rung nor a person come or gone. From the far wall issued a hi-tech whirr: one of the lifts had started to descend. A moment later the glass doors opened to a tall man in an immaculately cut pinstripe suit.
    Spike rose.
    ‘So sorry,’ the man called out, rotating the turnstile with a clip of his hip. ‘Nothing worse than being kept waiting after a long journey. I’m Nadeer Ziyad. How do you do?’
    Spike shook a dark, slender hand.
    ‘So very pleased to meet you,’ the man said. He looked mid-thirties, Spike’s age. His face was long and angular, his nose hooked like a hawk’s and his eyes sparkling with the green and yellow glints that were the hereditary mark of the Berbers, the original inhabitants of North Africa. ‘Let’s go upstairs,’ he said. ‘You all right with your case?’
    Spike swung his leather bag onto his shoulder and followed Nadeer towards the desk. As Nadeer passed, he whispered something in Arabic to the receptionist, who lowered her head before opening a drawer and taking out a remote. A rich air-con whoosh came from on high as they moved through the turnstile.
    Nadeer adjusted his carefully crafted Windsor knot as he stepped into the lift. ‘These country girls,’ he said with a smile. ‘They rate forty degrees as mild.’
    The speakers were piping out an instrumental version of ‘Candle in the Wind’. As the lift began to climb, Spike saw the receptionist stand from her desk. Her black pencil skirt rucked up her thighs as she crossed the marble to a cabinet beyond the palms. ‘So Tobes picked you up OK?’ Nadeer said.
    ‘Seemed most efficient.’
    The lift stopped and Nadeer extended an arm for Spike to exit. A row of doors ran along one side of a white-carpeted corridor, with a waist-high Perspex screen giving onto the atrium below. Cream-cushioned chairs with plastic covers still on seats had been placed between each doorway. ‘Developers are the same the world over,’ Nadeer said as he strolled away. ‘Take the estimate, double it and add a year. Don’t you find?’
    At the end of the corridor, Nadeer held open the door to an enormous corner office. Two of the walls consisted of floor-to-ceiling glass, the others solid and decorated with Rothkoesque sunscapes: burning reds, yellows, tangerines. In front of the tinted glass stood a heavy mahogany desk, to one side of which, propped against the skirting board, leaned a framed photograph of the King of Morocco.
    ‘On a clear day we can see your homeland from here,’ Nadeer said, striding over to the glass. ‘Like God reaching out for Adam’s fingertip, as my father likes to say. The continent of the past giving its blessing to the continent of the future.’ All Spike could see through the haze was a parasailor being towed around the bay,