"But now we can reason together," Rainey said, with an air of relief. He bent and reached beneath the table. He rose clutching a Rastafarian hookah of speckled bamboo, with a bowl of curving ramshorn, burnt sticky-black with resin. It looked a thousand years old, mummy-wrapped in antique leather thongs and crude dangling beads. "Will His Excellency join us?" Rainey asked.