by Fritz Galt
Khalid drove around a large, dusty plaza with new buildings and recently planted palms. He pointed to a pinkish building with arched windows, each pair of windows separated by a column.
“The government thinks that this will be a great city someday. That’s the new Hôtel de Ville.”
She saw only dark, unused rooms with one exception: a man yawning at a window.
Strange. He had blond hair.
Across the square, several military jeeps rushed northward, not far behind the police.
Alec could tell that life for Moroccans was no picnic. But their attitude helped.
Below his open window at the Hôtel de Ville, he noticed politeness among the people, unhesitant smiles, playful children and an unhurried milling about.
He stretched his arms and yawned. The day promised more sunshine and plenty of activity. From where he stood on the top floor, he could see the souk already forming on the outskirts of town.
“Come on, Anaïs,” he said. “Let’s buy some croissants and coffee.”
She approached him from behind and clasped her thin arms tightly around his waist. “I can we finally check out of this hotel?”
He freely admitted that the chalky, unpainted walls left much to be desired. They had just spent two freezing cold nights in the hotel, and that was enough.
“If we don’t find Natalie today, we’re probably too late,” he said. “We can check out now.”
The previous day, they had tried the name “Brahim Abbad” on countless people in town. It was the name that the actual Khalid Slimane had divulged that fateful evening on the sailboat. They had approached everyone from the librarian in the unfinished, sepulchral university to the waifs swimming and playing basketball at the Complex Sportif. They had combed the dusty side streets of town and spoken with any shopkeeper who understood French or English.
Everyone had known about the big funeral. Everyone had known about Brahim Abbad. But when Alec asked where Brahim lived, they suddenly were too busy to talk. And some gave him a second look that told him he had gone too far in asking.
So it was time to check out.
As Alec led Anaïs out of the hotel, a stooped woman in a robe approached them from the curb.
“You’re searching for Brahim Abbad,” she said, her French plain and understandable.
“Yes,” Anaïs said. “Where is he?”
The woman motioned for them to follow her.
Alec felt like letting out a cheer. The previous day’s work had paid off.
She led them toward the souk. It was a fenced area where women cooked and men sold fruit and tea on one end, and itinerant Berbers sold camels, mules, donkeys and goats on the other.
Already the aroma of poultry marinated in lemon and olives, and mutton steeped in prunes wafted through the makeshift stalls.
The woman led them to one stall where a tall, handsome man stood stirring soup over a propane burner. Beside him, flat bread was stacked up for sale. Alec assumed he was a transplanted Tuareg from the Sahara because of the indigo robe he wore that stained his skin blue.
For a second, Alec wondered if this was just a ruse to sell them breakfast. But the woman whipped back a flap of her patchwork tent and beckoned for them to enter.
Inside, they followed her order to sit on the pillows, which she called banquettes. Only then did he notice a baby sleeping in the corner on one such banquette. The man brought in a pot of mint tea and a tray of glasses. He set the glasses on a low table and poured the tea from a standing position. Then he left to tend to his cooking.
Alec picked up his glass, but it nearly scalded his fingers. It took some time to cool, but the tea turned out to be sweet and delicious.
“Monsieur and madame, my name is Hadiyah,” the woman finally said, her French easy to understand. “Recently, my husband and I moved our family north to this city for reasons that I will explain. Our son’s name is Khalid Slimane.”
Alec nearly spilled his tea. Anaïs exchanged glances with him, surprise registering on her face as well.
“Our son is an engineer living in Switzerland,” the woman continued.
Alec didn’t have the heart to tell her that their son, living under the alias “Omar Naftir,” was dead. And Alec wouldn’t tell her anything if it turned out her story didn’t hold water. “Why did you move here?”
“Brahim Abbad lives here. I’m afraid that Brahim will expose our son to the authorities.”
“What authorities?” Alec asked, confused. Did she mean the Swiss or the Moroccans?
The woman gestured at the four walls of her tent and put her finger to her lips.
Okay. So she was worried about the Moroccans.
“Khalid has certain leanings,” she said cryptically. “The same as Brahim. But Brahim is ruthless. Our son is only an idealist. In short, we moved here to appeal to Brahim not to turn our son into a fanatic.”
“Why would Brahim threaten to expose your son to the authorities?” Anaïs asked.
The woman shook her head.
“I know why,” Alec said.
Hadiyah and Anaïs turned to him.
“Your son could expose Brahim as well.” After all, Brahim had assumed Khalid’s identity to work at CERN. Khalid could have turned him in at any time.
But the woman shook her head. “What his father did wasn’t his fault.”
What was she talking about? Maybe Brahim had more to hide than his identity.
“I don’t understand,” Alec said.
“My husband will explain.” She stepped outside and ushered the man back into the colorful tent.
Reluctantly, he squatted on a pillow and related the tale of a shootdown attempt on the King’s plane.
“General Abbad was the Defense Minister at the time of the unsuccessful coup,” the man said. “The next night the general committed suicide.”
“He took responsibility for the lapse in security?” Alec asked.
The man shook his head. “Everyone knew it wasn’t suicide. General Abbad had tried to disguise the shootdown as an accident at sea. He wanted to install the King’s weak son as ruler. But the general didn’t succeed. And Brahim has had to bear his father’s shame. To this day, he carries on his father’s jihad.”
“Do you know where Brahim lives?” Alec asked.
“Of course,” the woman said. “This is a small town.”
“I must find him.”
“If you talk to Brahim, can you appeal to him on our son’s behalf?”
“Ma’am, we no longer need to do that.”
The couple stared uncomprehendingly at him. The grandchild stirred in the corner.
Alec had inhaled too much of the fumes from the propane burner and they churned in his stomach.
“Your son died heroically,” he told the couple. “He died to save my life.”
Using Hadiyah Slimane’s precise directions, Alec and Anaïs hurried to reach Brahim’s house, where they hoped to rescue Natalie Pierce. But first there was a crowded, dusty souk to wade through.
Camels sat everywhere. They were hobbled with one ankle tied behind the knee. One man tried to sell them his goat. Another wiped white foam off Alec’s shoulder and tried to entice them into buying his camel. The poor beast’s tongue hung out and his eyes were rolled back as he grunted piteously with foam squirting out of his mouth.
Alec took Anaïs by the hand and they tried to hurry away, but a small tent travelled randomly across their path and bumped into them. Alec listened to the group of men stuffed inside, presumably carrying on some sort of illegal activity out of the sight of Allah and the permissive gendarmes.
Alec was relieved to step out of the market and into the relative orderliness of town.
“I still have trouble with the names,” Anaïs said. “I still think of our dear engineering friend as Khalid. Not as Brahim.”
“When we get to Brahim’s house, we’ll see who answers the door. I think you’ll recognize him.”
“So how did you know these peo
ple’s son, the real Khalid Slimane?”
“He was a brave engineer in Geneva who was forced to take an alias, ‘Omar Naftir,’ because Brahim stole his name.”
“Why would Brahim steal his name?” she asked, somewhat shocked.
“I suppose Brahim couldn’t get into Switzerland as Brahim Abbad and furthermore needed the engineering credentials.”
“Why would Khalid let him just take his name?”
“I think it was more of a threat. Brahim could turn him in to Interpol for his Polisario activities.”
“Brahim threatening anybody?” she said, incredulous. “It seems absurd. How could our tender young friend be so terrible?”
“Brahim Abbad is more than an avenging son,” he said. “And don’t you fall for that ‘tender young friend’ routine for another second.”
They stopped on a leafy street, one block short of Brahim’s house.
Army jeeps and police vans had surrounded the small compound.
“I think someone’s beaten us to the house,” he said. He hoped Natalie wasn’t caught in the crossfire.
A man who looked like the household guard stood awkwardly by the gate.
Alec waited for a break in the line of soldiers, who were carrying out every conceivable object from the house and setting it on the street. Then he sidled up to the old man.
“I’m trying to reach the man of the house,” Alec said.
The man peered at Alec from under his turban. “If you’re looking for the American woman, she left with the son this morning.”
“Where to?”
“North to Casablanca. You missed them.”
The guy was more of a gossip than a guard.
Alec started to lead Anaïs away when he heard sandals shuffle up behind him. Then a hand picked at his sleeve.
It was an old woman.
“You’re the second foreigner to ask,” she said, then caught her breath and looked around warily.
“Am I?” Alec said. “Who was the first?”
“Another man. A handsome American with dark features.”
“What did he want?”
“Same thing as you. He wanted to know where Brahim went. And I told him.”
“Where’s that?”
The old woman pulled them away from the soldiers. “Maybe you can help my son. He and the beautiful young woman aren’t going to Casablanca at all.” She lowered her voice to a barely audible whisper. “They’re headed south to Marrakesh.”
“How do you know?”
She closed her eyes. “A son never lies to his mother.”
Chapter 43
“Where are you taking me?” Natalie asked, being pushed through a wall of guides hawking their services.
“I’ll show you the real Marrakesh,” Khalid said, and steered her into Marrakesh’s Medina, its old city.
Vendors had set up stalls or simply squatted on the ground surrounded by their pots, urns and religious artifacts. They sold cures by the gram: potions made of dried snake skin and pickled toads. Water sellers, men in red spangled hats with ladles around their necks, posed for pictures. Natalie passed a tooth-puller beside a pile of teeth, a line of blind beggars creating a collective draw for sympathy, and snake charmers beneath tent umbrellas tooting their shrill, dissonant pipes.
Linked sausages sizzled in smoking vats of grease. Steaming stuffed eggplant went to work on Natalie’s grumbling stomach. Cumin-flavored snail and fish head soups immediately counteracted the effect.
“Come back in here,” Khalid said. Together they plunged into the heart of the Medina.
It was an ancient world of labyrinthine streets and narrow shops. The richly dyed fabrics that shaded the streets, the men shouting and hoofs clomping and hammers ringing and the olfactory mélange from meat to spices to animal feces confounded Natalie’s senses.
They brushed chest-to-chest through hordes of people and squeezed down narrow, teeming streets that wound haphazardly through the old city. People led sheep and donkeys down dirt pathways. Veiled women carried long stalks of kale on their heads. When Natalie momentarily glanced away, a careering bicycle nearly ran her over.
“Hold onto your purse,” Khalid advised.
She imagined a pickpocket on every corner.
Kids ran around with warm bread from public bakeries. Shrouded women sat outside white-domed buildings where holy men were entombed.
Men and women of every age and description tugged on her elbows trying to guide her into their rug or leather or knickknack store. Shopkeepers literally ran into the street and absolutely insisted that she come inside just to look at their baskets or textiles or copper or jewelry.
Within fifteen minutes, she encountered every ploy imaginable. There were the students who said they wanted to walk with her to perfect their English. One man told her that he only wanted a ballpoint pen as payment. Others invited her inside to see their genuine carpet factories. A woman said she needed help writing a letter. An old man leaned out of his shop with a note and said he needed help understanding the prescription.
Natalie shrugged all of it off as best she could, but she got the impression that Allah had dropped her into the faithful’s laps so that she could give them money.
Khalid argued for her, and for that she probably owed him a debt of gratitude, but she decided to withhold her thanks until she knew exactly where he was taking her so purposefully.
At last he found the building he was looking for, and they stepped inside.
The Café Royale looked like a firetrap.
Half an hour later, Natalie sat cross-legged at a table full of men.
“How many wives do you have?” Khalid asked a plump, middle-aged merchant.
The man, named Ben, responded only with a blush.
“How many does the King have?” Khalid asked. “We don’t know, do we? We can only imagine.”
The group of casually dressed businessmen sat on banquettes and leaned against the patterned tile walls of the private dining room. Open windows allowed in the day’s heat, which formed dew on the walls and ceramic plates.
Along with the others, Natalie had washed her hands under an elaborate silver pitcher.
Now a huge pastilla platter sat on the low, round table before them. It was a meat and almond pie layered with sweet phyllo dough and topped with powdered sugar and cinnamon.
“What’s the meat?” she asked, licking her fingers. “It’s tasty.”
“Pigeon,” Khalid said, and watched for her closely.
She had eaten many unusual meals in her professional life and wasn’t going to allow Khalid the pleasure of laughing at her reaction. She let the onions, raisins and cinnamon direct her senses away from the chicken-like meat.
Then the restaurant owner placed a wide, shallow couscous bowl in the center of the table with a spoon for each person placed in the dish.
“Ah, good. Now we won’t leave the table hungry,” Khalid said.
Before them sat a mountain of yellow semolina grains topped with large pieces of mutton. The couscous dripped with a sweet dressing of raisins, fried onions, chickpeas and various vegetables such as carrots, onions and ginger.
Some people used the spoons to dig the couscous out from under the mutton while others created balls of couscous in their hands.
Natalie opted for the spoon technique.
When the mountain shrank, Khalid broke up the meat on top of the dish with a fork and served everyone in turn. Natalie found the mutton well marinated, but overcooked and stringy.
Soon, all that was left was a lovely, muti-colored bowl of ornate geometric shapes.
They finished dinner with a huge bowl of fruit and the Café Royale’s specialty: ice cream cake.
Khalid’s friends were engaging company, but Natalie couldn’t shake the feeling that they were evaluating her, sizing her up for some hidden purpose. They hardly seemed like terrorists, not that terrorist looked different from anyone else. Were they grooming her to be a terrorist?
&nb
sp; They spoke French for her benefit and conducted no business during the meal. It merely seemed like an occasion to renew old friendships.
She had been watching for unspoken signals between Khalid and the men, and there were none until the very end. The plump guy named Ben gave a surreptitious nod to Khalid, and, as quickly as they had convened, the party broke up.
The party bounced full-bellied down the narrow staircase and dispersed into the busy Medina.
Mick was hungry. He jumped out of his cab and walked past the long line of cars waiting for security at the CIA’s main gate.
With the transmitter in the lining of Mick’s jacket giving off his whereabouts, O’Smythe’s men had tracked him down last night at the DC airport. Clearly they didn’t like that he had abandoned his mission of finding Proteus in Africa.
But Mick had other reasons to get into CIA headquarters as quickly as possible. He hadn’t ventured in public long enough to eat since yesterday lunch.
He had checked into a hotel near the National Zoo at Washington’s trendy Dupont Circle. Still jet-lagged from his sleepless flight from Casablanca to JFK, his visit to IBM’s research headquarters, and the evening flight to DC, followed by a deadly pursuit on Memorial Bridge, he was anxious for some personal safety and a good meal, followed by a special visit to the Agency’s dental care department.
His government ID and a good reputation got him onto the CIA grounds in Langley, but it wouldn’t let him through the building’s metal detector as long as he was wearing a transmitter.
It took a frantic call the previous night to the deputy director of operations to get that accomplished.
He gave his name to security at the metal detector and the guard went online to check the exceptions list.
He stood in the CIA lobby studying the marble wall that commemorated those who had fallen in the line of duty. There were no names. Each person was represented by a single star after the year in which he or she was killed. His eyes traveled from year to year. He could name events. Name places. Name names.
At last the guard apologized and let him through.