by Fritz Galt
“We can call the baggage claim desk,” Alec said, wiping his eyes.
With some help from the hotel’s night manager, Natalie got through to the airport on the telephone. The lost bag clerk was just helping his last customer for the night.
“Flight 931 from Geneva? Let me check my notes,” the man said. He came back on the phone within a minute. “The last suitcase arrived this afternoon. Nobody came to collect it, so we shipped it to the forwarding address.”
“Which is…?”
“That’s on another report. One moment, please.”
The man spoke Arabic to someone else, perhaps clearing up another matter. Another minute passed.
At last, he came back on the line. “We shipped the suitcase to Essaouira by truck this afternoon. Address is the Hôtel des Iles.”
Whew. “Thank you.”
She set the phone down.
“He’s in Essaouira at the Hôtel des Iles.”
Anaïs unfolded a map. “Essaouira is on the coast, just west of here.”
Alec turned out the light. “We can take a taxi there in the morning.”
The sheets rustled as the two settled back in for the night.
Then out of the darkness came Anaïs’ small voice. “Good work, Natalie.”
“I thought I’d do something useful for a change.”
Natalie lay awake for a full hour, evaluating her performance. What in the world did she think she was doing? She had left her job, effectively cheated on her husband, lost Khalid’s trail and deeply humiliated herself. In return, what had she learned about Khalid? His real name was Brahim Abbad, he dealt with Arab sheiks, he knew Morocco, he knew Proteus, he had money, he wanted to kill the president and he treated her like dirt. Big whoop.
So what else was new?
Chastising herself was useful only up to a point. Sleep was more important. She finally passed out repeating a mantra.
It was the conundrum planted in her mind by the dead man’s final words: “He’ll track thinking Lucerne…”
At daybreak in Marrakesh, Natalie trotted with Alec and Anaïs to the Avenue Mohammed V, where they found a taxi. The driver insisted on waiting for more passengers. Finally, Alec offered to pay extra if they left at once, and they settled on a price.
The three scooted into the back seat.
“You can borrow a dress of mine,” Anaïs said. “Remember, we’re the same size.”
Natalie looked down at the white gown she was still wearing from last night. She had long since lost track of her wardrobe. She had left Bern with a suitcase packed with summer clothes, but that was left behind in Montreux. She had borrowed a workout suit and clothes from Anaïs already, but left that behind at the Hilton in Geneva. She had bought conservative clothes at the airport before flying to Casablanca, but that had been left behind as well, along with Mick’s leather, in Khalid’s car trunk in Marrakesh.
“I owe you for a lot of clothes,” Natalie said. “Maybe I can buy something in Essaouira.”
“You’ll need money for that,” Alec reminded her, and slipped her a wad of cash.
She had nowhere to stash it, with her purse, wallet, passport and every other shred of her existence having been lost along the way. So she tucked it into the bag of food they had picked up for the trip.
The road to the coast crossed a dusty plain. Promising outcroppings of white buildings turned out to be supply centers for rural folks and restaurants for travelers. Pedestrians and donkeys waited patiently in the shade.
The cab passed a shepherd and his flock. The man lay on his side staring vacantly at the vault of the sky while his sheep sniffed for moisture under loose rocks. What in the world was the guy thinking about?
As they neared the coast, Natalie spotted a woman selling honeydew melons. A sign read three dirhams apiece. What a steal.
They bounced and swerved over low-lying coastal hills dappled with dusty olive orchards. Finally, the road pitched down toward the ancient port of Essaouira.
Thorny shrubs grew everywhere. Then she saw it, a thin, hard line of dunes against a cobalt sea. They were on the Atlantic.
Within minutes, the cab pulled onto Essaouira’s main thoroughfare. The road separated a wide strip of beach from vacation homes and hotels.
Once again they were driving on a road named after the king.
“Slow down and take us past the Hôtel des Iles,” Alec requested.
They reached the hotel shortly.
“Don’t pull in,” he instructed the cabbie. “Just stop on the curb.”
Grunting unhappily, the man cruised to the edge of the road and stopped.
A group of pale-skinned tourists sat on their luggage by the steps of the four-star hotel. There was no tall Moroccan and no airport truck.
“We can’t exactly stay at this hotel,” Natalie said. “Brahim might recognize us.”
Alec stared at her. “You know his real name.”
She nodded. The sheiks had called him that in Settat.
“Can we find another hotel?” she asked the cab driver.
Now the man smiled. “My friend has a wonderful place.”
She should have known.
They passed several roadside stands where fishermen grilled sardines in puffs of charcoal smoke. Behind the fishermen, rowboats rocked patiently along a pier.
“Chez Sam.” The taxi driver pointed to the pier. “Another friend.”
He smacked his lips.
“Restaurant for fish.”
As soon as they passed through the town’s ancient ramparts, the street became a busy, cobblestone marketplace. The driver rudely prodded pedestrians with his bumper and gunned his engine to part the veiled masses.
The old town seemed like a shining dream world. Was Natalie hallucinating?
Many whitewashed houses sported blue-painted doors. White steps led in every direction. Parapets provided a sea wall against the surging water a hundred feet below.
“Voilà, l’hôtel des Ramparts,” the driver announced.
The dilapidated building was ensconced in the Medina’s fortifications. And like the ramparts, it had seen better days. The only thing to recommend the place was its splendid panorama of the sea.
Natalie peeled herself off the back seat, and Alec wiped his forehead with a handkerchief.
She felt both hungry and sick. The briny sea air didn’t help.
The cabbie escorted them directly to the receptionist and leaned on the counter while they checked in.
Alec whipped out his wallet and paid him the prearranged fare.
“And for the room?” the cabbie asked.
“Are you my travel agent, too?”
The man smiled, but wasn’t about to leave. Alec handed him a few extra dirhams to get lost.
The man scratched his head, then grudgingly accepted it and stopped pestering them. He still hung around the reception counter, though, waiting for his kickback from the hotel.
They took their keys and left.
Natalie’s room smelled stuffy. She opened a dusty window for air and was greeted by a view of the old city. It was nice enough.
She crawled onto the single bed, closed her eyes and tried to keep her head from pounding.
She found a carton of orange juice in the bag of food she was carrying and peeled the foil back.
As she lay on her back sipping the drink, she listened to the sounds of the Medina below. Unhurried and methodical hammering and sawing drifted up from the carpenters’ souk. She could even smell the powerful scent of cedar and thuya wood.
God, she wished Mick were there.
It wasn’t real if he wasn’t there to experience it with her.
She wasn’t real either. The only one who could take her and hold her and handle her like putty and set her on her back and make her laugh until the lights danced in her head and made her feel wonderful and needed was Mick. She didn’t need to be liked. She needed to be needed. And Mick was the only guy out there who satisfied that wish.
; She heard a knock on her door.
“Wait.”
She needed a moment to wipe the tears from her eyes.
Then she stood and opened the door. Alec and Anaïs walked in and checked out her view.
“Our phone isn’t working,” Anaïs explained. “Can we use yours?”
“Give it a try.”
They got a dial tone.
Through the hotel operator, Anaïs obtained the number of the Hôtel des Iles, which she dialed.
“Bonjour,” Anaïs said. “Is a Monsieur Slimane registered there?” There was a pause. “Non?”
“Ask about the truck,” Alec said.
“Did a truck deliver a valise from the airport? It’s coming? For whom is the delivery? Merci.” She set the phone down.
“Well?” Natalie said, straightening her hair.
“A Monsieur Abbad is waiting for his valise to be delivered from the airport.”
Her eyes locked on Alec’s.
“I’ll check it out,” he said, and whirled around to leave.
Gus Carlucci was having a bad day as he bounced across the countryside in a city-to-city taxi.
He was never going to catch up with Brahim Abbad, the bastard that Everett Hoyle was worried about. And Ms. Pierce had turned into a demon from hell. Likely she and Brahim were connected in a way that went far deeper than sharing lunch at the Café Royale.
The night before, after having had his nose broken by a swinging door and his face destroyed by boiling oil thrown at him, Gus had stumbled, half-blinded after the beautiful, sobbing Ms. Pierce.
He couldn’t muster enough energy to raise his voice for her to hear him as she and her cohorts had hurried off to a different hotel.
A local hospital had tried to reset his nose and treat his burnt face. They told him he risked infection if he left their ward. But he had to go.
Back at the Hotel La Mamounia, the staff had stood back in horror as he entered the lobby. In his room, he had looked in the mirror at himself for the first time. Through his eyeholes, he saw nothing but white strips of gauze covering his face. He looked like a walking mummy.
He also realized that the tuxedo he had rented from the lobby shop was too stained to return, or even to wear. He threw it into his suitcase and changed into slacks and a light cotton shirt. He also packed away a fresh roll of gauze and the tube of cream that the hospital had provided him.
He had gone down to the lobby, paid for his tux and checked out of the Hotel La Mamounia. He retraced his steps across the now-empty Bazaar of the Dead to wait outside the budget hotel where Ms. Pierce was staying.
The sunrise hurt his eyes.
Ms. Pierce and her companions had departed at dawn, and he had been ready with a second cab. His cab followed them across the hot desert.
Along the way, he was bothered by a putrid smell that permeated his facial gauze. It appeared that his ointment was melting and the salve from his blisters was dripping into his lap.
Delirious, he was still able to notice that her cab, just ahead of his, was pausing before a hotel.
“Let me out here,” he rasped, and threw money at the driver.
No sooner had he stepped out of the cab, than his driver hit the gas and zoomed away.
But Ms. Pierce’s cab didn’t let her out. Instead, it gunned to life and disappeared with her and her accomplices still in it.
Aw hell.
He was left stranded on the sidewalk in front of a random hotel.
A wave of heat washed over him. It was going to kill him. He turned and staggered into the lobby and bumped up against reception.
“I need a room,” he croaked. “With air conditioning.”
A ghost-like figure stared back at him in a lobby mirror. It took him a minute to realize that it was himself.
“Do you need a doctor?” the receptionist asked, her nose wrinkled and her eyes concerned.
“No. Just a room.”
“One moment please,” she said, and typed on her keyboard.
As Gus waited, a smartly dressed man brushed up against him bringing a whiff of Aramis cologne. The man leaned across the counter for a confidential word with the receptionist.
“Has my luggage arrived yet? I’m expecting a suitcase from the airport.”
“Your name, sir?” she asked.
“My name is Abbad. Brahim Abbad.”
Chapter 48
With the explosive successfully removed from his mouth, Mick could now destroy the tracking device in his suit coat. Or, he could make more mischief and throw Sir Trevor O’Smythe off his trail.
He opted for confusing O’Smythe.
He had obtained extra transmitters with matching frequencies, but what he needed now was a roll of tape.
However, it was Sunday and most stores in DC were closed.
Huddled against a driving rain, he took a brisk walk up Wisconsin Avenue. After passing numerous apartment complexes and shuttered storefronts, he heard the distinctive clank of a cash register ringing open and slamming shut.
The aroma of a wood shop, the scent of peat moss and the raw smell of oily pipes told him that he had arrived at Hechinger’s Hardware Store.
He entered the tall shelves of bathroom sinks, electric drills, strip lighting and hardware fasteners. It almost made him want to delve into home improvement.
What a lonely task that would be without Natalie.
Finding the adhesive section, he selected a roll of nylon-reinforced tape. He also picked up a pair of scissors.
He felt foolish standing in line with the tape and scissors. In front of him, a PVC artist was planning to drain a new toilet through several floors of a house. Behind him a young couple examined duplicate house keys to their new apartment.
On the rain-soaked sidewalk, he had to jump back as cars splashed through puddles and windshield wipers flicked water in his face.
He looked for a suitable target and saw a taxi sitting empty at the curb.
He quickly snipped two long pieces of tape, reached into his pocket, pulled out one of the three thin plastic boxes he had obtained at Langley and flipped on the power switch. Then he reached out over the taxi and taped the transmitter to a dry spot under the advertising sign.
That would keep O’Smythe’s men chasing traffic for hours.
He turned and jogged down the wet cement steps of the Tenley Heights metro station. There, he caught the Red line heading back to Dupont Circle.
The exit took him up to P Street, where he walked two short blocks back to his hotel.
The lobby was full of guests checking out. Business people and tourists were traveling in different directions. Again, he could keep O’Smythe chasing transmitter blips for days.
Guests waited in line to settle their bills, their luggage piled onto the furniture behind them.
Mick found a seat by a suitcase that bore airport stickers from San Francisco and Sydney.
He slipped another transmitter out of his pocket, flipped on the switch and slid it into an outer pocket of the suitcase.
A ruddy-faced couple finished checking out and came over to collect the suitcase.
Mick nodded at them. “Where are you folks headed?”
“Auckland,” the man answered in a good-natured way.
“Happy trails.”
They smiled and took the suitcase out under the awning by the curb.
A young Asian, perhaps Filipino, had set his soft-sided suitcase beside another lobby chair.
Mick inserted the last plastic transmitter into a zippered side pocket and pressed the “On” switch.
When the man returned from checking out, Mick flashed a friendly smile. “Going home?”
The man shook his head. “No. South America.”
Excellent.
Mick rode the elevator back to his room. There, he turned off the central air, slid the balcony door open and let the drizzle whisper to him.
He slipped a hand into his gray coat pocket and felt for the original transmitter. He pulled it out and
studied it. It was such an innocuous looking box.
A garbage truck was just picking up the dumpster beneath his window. He tossed the transmitter into the dumpster and watched it get swallowed by the truck.
The truck set the dumpster back on the pavement with a thud, then revolved its door shut to compact the trash.
The garbage man gave the driver a signal and hopped on the back of the truck and it lurched away.
Mick watched it head down the street.
He was free.
No longer tethered to his coat and O’Smythe, he could disappear from his past, and his responsibilities. He could leave the president and CERN behind him. He could even walk away from his wife.
And what was left? Would he revert to his old self, an unmarried Marine with a heightened sense of duty? Was he, in fact, a professional con artist as the CIA had tried to make him? Or was he now the tired old bureaucrat, forever chained to his desk?
He found himself standing on the tips of his toes, his nose thrust outward, eagerly inhaling the aromas of life along the Potomac.
That was him. A man who lived to smell the dewdrops on the rhododendrons.
Standing in the lobby of the hotel in Essaouira, Gus Carlucci had found Brahim Abbad at last. And they were staying at the same hotel.
Gus would design a strategy to eavesdrop on Brahim once he regained his strength. For the moment, all he wanted was a cool room and a bed.
Fighting waves of dizziness, he took his room key from the receptionist and staggered with his suitcase up the stairs. Once safely in his room, he fell onto the bed and lay there for a quarter of an hour, watching through his eyeholes as the blades of his ceiling fan swirled around and around.
He had made many mistakes on this mission. He hadn’t informed the office where he was going. He hadn’t stayed in contact with Everett Hoyle in Bern or with the desk in DC. He hadn’t leaned heavily enough on his friend Ali in Rabat. He had tracked a woman solo across Marrakesh. He had never expected her to slam the door in his face. Then, to cap it all off, he had gotten plastered by a vat of scorching hot fat. All day, speeding dazed and mostly incapacitated across the desert, he was risking his health, if not his life.