by Fritz Galt
But in the end, he had done one thing right. He had located Brahim.
Now, what to do about it?
If Bern needed evidence of a plot to kill the president, he had two choices, either shake down Brahim or plunder his room in search of clues.
He was in no condition to shake down anybody, especially not a healthy young man, so he opted to search for clues.
Brahim had given his room number to the receptionist, so it was just a matter of breaking into the room while Brahim was away.
At that moment, something went rattling past his door. He rolled out of bed to look. It was a maid pushing a cart of cleaning supplies.
It was just the opportunity he needed.
He reached inside his suitcase for a vial of chloroform and followed the woman.
She tidied up her mop and brushes and opened the door to a janitor’s closet.
He followed her in and uncorked the vial under her nose.
She slumped into his arms. He kicked the door shut and eased her to the floor.
In her jacket pocket, he found a master key to the guest rooms. He could get into Brahim’s room with that.
But someone might spot him and recognize him. Then he made out a black djellabah hanging from a hook on the wall.
Perfect.
He slipped the thick robe over his bandaged head and pulled the cowl low over his face. The robe smelled of sweat-saturated wool, but it covered the gauze well.
In case something went wrong while barging in on Brahim, he needed to have his suitcase ready to go. Stepping back into the hallway, he realized that the robe was so short that his legs were exposed from the knees down. So he bent over as he shuffled to his room.
Once inside, he took a few deep breaths and tried to take stock of his health. His heart was racing and his immune system was working overtime to fight infection. His energy was fading fast.
In the mirror, he was staring at the Grim Reaper.
His wallet and passport were still neatly tucked away in his suitcase along with his extra clothes and medical supplies. He snapped the case shut and took it from the room. Resuming his crippled pose, he headed down an exterior walkway to Brahim’s room.
There, he hesitated one last time. He heard nothing inside.
He knocked, and there was no response.
Excellent.
Gus slid the master key into the lock and turned the knob slowly. Brahim’s door swung open.
Now every second counted.
It took a moment to adjust to the murky darkness. The curtains were partially open, and the room looked untouched.
However, a small brown suitcase sat on the desk. It looked similar in color and size to his own. It appeared that the hotel had just brought it upstairs and set it in his room.
A clock began ticking in his mind.
He set his own suitcase down on the desk momentarily to try the latches on Brahim’s.
Footsteps stopped by the open door.
Gus grabbed Brahim’s suitcase. He would take the whole thing.
He turned and looked up. The dark shape of a young man stood silhouetted against the hallway. It was Brahim.
Gus constricted his throat. Like an old woman, he croaked, “Monsieur,” and showed Brahim the dark form of his own suitcase on the desk.
Hiding Brahim’s suitcase behind his robe, he shuffled toward the door.
Just as he reached it, he noticed Brahim digging into his pocket.
“Un moment.” Brahim stopped him with his arm.
Gus spun around toward him, his face averted.
Brahim slapped something in his hand.
It was a tip.
Gus gulped. “Merci.”
Ambling down the corridor away from the room, he held his breath.
He had Brahim’s suitcase, and with luck it might contain evidence to defuse the plot to kill the president.
On the other hand, he had left his own suitcase with his credentials, personal effects and medicine in Brahim’s room.
He had to leave the hotel at once.
By the time Brahim noticed that the suitcase on his desk had someone else’s name on the tag, it was too late.
A frantic call to the front desk revealed that the black djellabah had left by taxi a minute earlier. By then, it would be one of many such djellabahs roaming the streets of Essaouira.
All Brahim’s instincts told him not to touch the suitcase that had been left with him. Too many people wanted him dead.
So he did the most logical thing. He brought it down to the lobby.
“Excuse me,” he said to the bellboy. “Did someone just deliver this suitcase up to my room?”
“Yes, sir.”
“I’m afraid I can’t open it. Would you mind trying?”
“Not at all,” the young man said.
“This requires some privacy. Would you mind standing at the far end of this counter, say on the other side?”
“Certainly.”
The bellboy carried the suitcase to the far end of the lobby. Meanwhile, Brahim stepped behind a concrete wall. A second later, he heard both latches spring open.
He waited.
The suitcase squeaked against the counter. Then the hinges sprang open.
Brahim returned to the counter. “Oh, I see that you got it.”
“No problem, sir,” the bellboy said, a blank expression on his face.
“Merci bien.”
Brahim closed the small suitcase and carried it back up to his room. He clicked on a light and studied the contents.
There was an American Embassy ID and a diplomatic passport. That was curious, and troubling.
There was also a room key, a sheet of paper with various international phone numbers, a roll of gauze and disinfectant cream and a folded, white tuxedo splattered with blood and stained by a yellow liquid that smelled of pus and polymyxin disinfectant.
An image flashed through his mind.
He had seen a guest checking into the hotel with his entire face wrapped in a bandage.
The pieces were falling into place. An American spy must have survived a serious accident and then tracked him down to Essaouira.
Brahim thought he had effectively ditched Natalie Pierce in Marrakesh, never to be seen again by Western eyes.
But the Americans were still onto him.
That would only make his job more interesting.
He picked up the roll of gauze. It was time to rattle some cages and see what vermin came out.
He studied the name and photo on the passport and identification card.
“Hello,” he said in a broad American accent. “I’m August Carlucci. Call me Auggie.”
Chapter 49
Natalie sat with Alec in Essaouira’s trendy Chez Sam and watched surfers swagger in after an exhausting day riding the rollers on Cap Sim and Diabat.
Then Anaïs came swishing into the restaurant and joined them at the table.
“We took the liberty of ordering for you,” Alec said.
“I’m sorry I’m late,” the young Swiss woman apologized.
She explained that she had been wandering around enjoying Essaouira and learning the history of the old city. Apparently the outlying islands had once supplied the Roman emperor with his exclusive purple dye.
“The factory extracted dye from shellfish,” she said. “Each shellfish had one drop of dye no bigger than a single tear.”
Natalie didn’t let her gaze drift for long away from the waterfront. An impressive trawler fleet with red hulls, white siding and blue trim rocked gently outside the restaurant. Sailors had to climb from one ship to another to reach those farthest from the pier.
After Anaïs finished her report, Alec set his menu down thoughtfully and folded his long fingers.
“I saw our man Brahim at the Hôtel des Iles. I couldn’t get too close to him without him recognizing me, but I heard him talk about eating dinner out tonight.”
“Chances are he’ll either go to Sam’s or to the Châlet de la
Plage,” Anaïs said. “From what I learned, these two restaurants are the only night-life of Essaouira.”
Chez Sam was located halfway down the harbor pier. Through the decorative clutter of seafaring paraphernalia in the windows, Natalie watched local evening life unfold. Gauloises dangling from their lips, fishermen strolled among their nets. Others poured tea and conversed over oil drums. Occasionally, groups of veiled women padded past.
She felt attracted to Sam’s salty ambiance, but somehow it didn’t feel right to sit down to such a lovely dinner with the president’s life at stake.
The waiter arrived and set their food before them.
Natalie inhaled the sweet aromas while listening to boats creaking against their moorings just beyond the window. She would chalk dinner up to taking advantage of the local cover.
Her stomach was growling something fierce. She lifted the cone-shaped lid and dug into her squid tajine. She sucked in the delicate tendrils of squid and spooned up the stew, savoring the combination of tomato, ginger, saffron and sweet and hot red peppers.
For his part, Alec seemed to be enjoying his surfer’s portion of sole and a huge plate of fried squid rings. Anaïs lost herself in a large platter of grilled turbot with tiny crevettes.
Natalie was pleased with her seafood catch, but they had yet to net the big one.
She turned to her brother-in-law. “Exactly what happened on Lake Geneva that triggered this whole sequence of events?”
Events had involved an unidentified corpse, a drowned coroner, the loss of her husband. Everything stemmed from the lake incident.
“I was Brahim’s first target,” Alec said, and slumped back in his wooden chair.
His face transformed from its normal cheery exuberance to a morbid grayness.
“The man who died that night was a real engineer, the actual Khalid Slimane. Several months earlier, Brahim had assumed his identity to enter Switzerland and work at CERN.”
“How did he do that?” Natalie asked.
“As fellow students in Paris, Brahim knew that Khalid sympathized with the Polisario Front, and he used this to blackmail Khalid. France would deny Khalid the right to work at CERN or possibly even arrest him and his family if they knew of his former association with the Polisario Front. So threatening blackmail, Brahim took Khalid’s name as a cover, and Khalid could do nothing about it. As soon as Brahim stepped off the airplane in Geneva, he became Khalid.”
“You learned this from the real Khalid?” Natalie asked.
He nodded. “SATO had me get Brahim a job there, but he wasn’t much of an engineer.”
“What’s SATO?” Anaïs asked, innocently enough.
Natalie stiffened and looked at Alec. If the young woman wasn’t a part of SATO, she shouldn’t be told about it.
“I wouldn’t worry about the SATO organization anymore,” he told Natalie. “I think we’re long past that. It was a necessary step to get membership. That’s all behind us now.”
“Just go ahead with your story,” Natalie said, still uncomfortable with bandying about secrets.
“After getting Brahim hired, I put in a transfer to the magnets division to keep an eye on him, and I believe that’s when he realized that I didn’t trust him. So he acted on his suspicions and tried to snuff me out.”
Alec took a long sip of beer before continuing.
“I was washing up in my apartment bathroom the night before the boat incident, when I heard someone enter the apartment. I left the tap running and listened. Dogmatix started barking in the master bedroom. Someone ran past me, and an automatic weapon opened fire on Dogmatix. I managed to overpower the guy and turn his gun on him. Shooting the intruder was the only thing I could do at the time. Plus, he’d just shot my dog.”
“Who wrote the word ‘Proteus’ on the bedroom wall?” Anaïs asked.
“You were there?”
“We both were,” Natalie said.
He thought for a moment. “I didn’t see anything written on the bedroom wall.”
“It was written in Dogmatix’s blood,” Anaïs said.
He turned pale. “Probably when his hit man failed to report back, Brahim checked out my apartment. But I had already gone into hiding. Since I no longer believed that Brahim was a part of the SATO network, I turned to Omar.”
“Omar Naftir?” Anaïs asked.
“Yes,” he said. “The real Khalid Slimane, poor guy. He had to assume the name Omar when Brahim took his.”
“Omar is dead?” Anaïs whispered to herself.
“He died for me,” Alec said, and gave her an unsparing look.
Natalie was confused. “Who was Omar?”
“Anaïs and I vaguely knew him through Brahim. Through several conversations with the two, I came to suspect that Omar was coaching Brahim on engineering and high-energy physics. So, I planned an outing on the lake with Omar to press him for more information about Brahim. After the shooting in my apartment, I decided against my better judgment to proceed with the outing. It turns out that Brahim had nearly complete control over Omar. He knew about the boat trip and prepped Omar on what to tell me.”
“Brahim killed Omar?” Anaïs gasped. She looked stunned.
“That’s right, but that came later. On the Celeste, Omar began to explain to me that his real name was Khalid Slimane and how Brahim had assumed his identity.”
“You told us all that,” Natalie said. “He was a former sympathizer for the Polisario Front.”
“Then he gave me the line that Brahim had fed him. He told me that Proteus intended to go to Paris to pass on technical information. Later, I traveled there to break into the operation.”
Anaïs bowed her head.
“Unfortunately,” Alec continued, “I didn’t learn much more than that from our friend, because Brahim was following our sailboat in a speedboat. Trying to evade his every turn, we were driven further into the storm. The mast came crashing down on us and struck Omar on the head.”
“You mean the real Khalid,” Natalie clarified.
Alec nodded. “Brahim gave up in the high waves and turned back. The Celeste was taking on water, and I knew I might not be able to get Khalid back to safety.”
He paused and swallowed hard.
“Khalid knew that he might die. As he lay bleeding on the deck, he proposed to assume my identity. As a result, I was able to go underground.”
Natalie let her spoon drop to her plate. “That’s why his body had your personal effects?”
“He helped me to disappear. He stuck to our story to the very end, and I owe him for that.”
Natalie had briefly taken her eyes off the activity on the wharf when something caught her attention. “There’s that man from the bazaar,” she whispered.
A man in a white tuxedo, his face covered by the brim of a hat, turned to enter Sam’s restaurant.
The front door opened and the man stepped in, a revolver drawn in his hand.
The previously boisterous crowd grew silent, and the barman found a reason to duck behind his counter.
Alec jumped to his feet and his chair toppled over. He snatched a pointed knife from the table.
The stranger looked up, revealing a face completely wrapped in gauze, with the exception of his eyes, that stared through tiny holes.
Alec cocked his elbow and prepared to throw the knife.
Just then, someone in a woman’s djellabah paused at the window and stared inside. She clutched a brown valise against her black robe.
“Wait,” Natalie cried.
She recognized the suitcase. It was Brahim’s.
The man in the doorway saw the woman, too. He turned his gun and blasted a hole out the window.
Glass shattered onto the pier and the black figure dashed away, apparently unhurt.
Alec heaved the knife at the man. It whirred through the air and quivered against the doorframe, pinning the man’s gun hand to the wood.
“Don’t bother with that creep,” Natalie said hoarsely. “Get Brahim. That
woman is Brahim.”
Natalie was half-standing and pointed out the broken window. A plume of smoke from a trawler at the end of the pier blew toward the restaurant, partly obscuring her view. The figure in the black robe sprinted toward the departing boat.
Wind blew the robe’s cowl back, revealing short black hair.
Alec plowed unapologetically through the tables and out the door where the knife still quivered, pinning the man’s arm. On his way out, Alec snatched the gun away.
Having cast its mooring lines aside, the fishing trawler pulled away from the wharf. The black figure wasn’t going to reach it in time.
Natalie and Anaïs, as well as half of the restaurant, rushed out the door to watch.
The trawler’s red prow slid past the figure in black, who tried to throw the suitcase on board. It glanced off a line, spun midair and dropped into the water like a rock. Upon hitting the water, it bobbed up to the surface.
The figure pounced toward the trawler’s hull and barely caught the railing as it eased into the open harbor.
Gun in hand, Alec drew up sharply as the trawler slipped away.
With great effort, the figure swung upward onto the gunwale.
The trawler began turning away, the setting sun casting a roseate glow across its stern.
Alec crouched low and fired a single shot.
The black djellabah crumpled. There was a throaty, agonized scream. “God damn it.”
It was an American.
“That doesn’t sound like Brahim,” Natalie said.
The figure plunged into the water and began to sink in the ship’s wake.
Alec leaped over the railing and dove headfirst into the fetid water. Five strokes later, and he pulled up the black robe.
Natalie and Anaïs stood transfixed alongside the crowd that had gathered on the wharf. Several fishermen lowered poles to pull Alec and the body out of the water.
“Who is it?” Natalie cried.
Gasping, Alec hoisted the heavy mass onto the dock. Then he finally leaned over and pulled the hood back.
Natalie swallowed, hard. It was a handsome-looking, middle-aged man with Mediterranean features. But it definitely wasn’t Brahim. The face was blistered from forehead to chin and oozed with scarlet sores.