A World I Never Made

by James Lepore

  “Good evening,” Max said to the deputy in German, “I’m Max French:”

  “Max French?”

  “Yes, that’s my name:”

  “Oh, pardon. I thought you were telling me you were the top Frenchman. American slang I”ve picked up. You’re not French?”

  “No, I’m American. FBI. How is the rest of your English? My German is rusty.”

  “Good,” the deputy answered, “shall we switch?”

  “Yes. You were the first to arrive?”

  “Yes.”

  “What led you here?”

  “I was home. The chief called from the party. I went to the Peterhof. I live only a few minutes away. Laurence and Nolan had left about ten minutes prior. There is only the one main road out of town. I took it. I saw tire tracks going into the park. Very unusual, as it is closed for the winter. I followed. There was a light on on the carousel. I drove to it and checked it out. Nothing:”

  “Were there footprints?”

  The deputy did not answer. Max could see in her eyes that she was embarrassed.

  “Speak!” Orlofsky said in perfect German.

  “I did not notice:”

  “Go on,” said Max.

  “I saw the car tracks heading toward the river. I followed with my flashlight and saw the car in the water. I called the tow truck and the chief. They arrived at the same time. Then the chief sent me to talk to the neighbors:”

  “Did they see anything?”

  “No.”

  While they were talking, the Peugeot had been dragged from the river. It was now dangling, rear end up, from the back of the tow truck. The operator, the river still dripping from his foul-weather suit, was standing next to it, his hand on the rear fender, proud of his catch.

  “Lower it,” Orlofsky said, again in perfect German. The operator complied, pulling a lever on the side of his truck and easing the back of the car to the ground.

  “Get the trunk open,” Orlofsky said, and again the wet giant complied, wielding the same crowbar he had used earlier to open the car’s rear door. “At least we have one competent German;” Orlofsky muttered in French. Inside the trunk, besides a great deal of water from the river Ohře, were three AK-47s and a dozen or so loaded clips. The chief, also in a parka and boots, had come over, and all four eyed the rifles.

  “Where is the nearest ballistics lab?” Orlofsky asked.

  “In Nuremburg,” the chief replied. He was a big man. Not perhaps as big as the tow truck driver, but well over six feet and bulky, with a big gut, in his late forties. Born after the war, Max thought, apropos of nothing, except that when he was living in France, this was how he had routinely categorized people. Were they alive when all that bad shit was happening? Or had they been born since, into the dream life of postwar Europe, content to drift with the pack from state school to state job to state-paid retirement? He had been feeling particularly anti-France since the French had sandbagged the US in the run-up to the war in Iraq, and had been praying, sort of, that Megan Nolan was not a terrorist. Though that was pretty unprofessional, he had to admit.

  “We’ll send them back in the helicopter,” Orlofsky said. Max knew that the rounds taken from one of the dead Arabs at the Cap de la Hague farm had been from a Kalashnikov, but he saw this attention to detail, this meticulous policework as a waste of time. They should be organizing a manhunt right now: bloodhounds, helicopters, military units, the whole ball of wax. Nolan and Laurence could not be far.

  His thoughts were interrupted by the loud ringing of the chief’s cell phone, which he swiftly extracted from his coat pocket and brought to his ear. “Ja,” he said, and then after a moment, “ja” again. Then, in French, looking over at Orlofsky, “We’ll be right there.”

  “What?” said Orlofsky.

  “The Czech police have fished a man from the river. A young gypsy. In his wallet they found a telephone number which they have traced to a cell phone owned by a Daniel Peletier in Brittany.”

  “Is the gypsy alive?” Max asked.

  “Yes.”

  “Where is he?” This from Orlofsky.

  “In a hospital in Cheb:”

  “Let’s go,” Orlofsky said to the chief.“You can drive us in your car. I want to talk to this gypsy. Can we trust your deputy?”

  “Yes.”

  The deputy was standing no more than five feet away. Turning to her, Orlofsky said,“You’re in charge. Secure this area. Get a search going up and down the river on both sides. Get something from the hotel room and use hounds. Get the pilot to fly low along both banks, get more helicopters if you can. We are looking for terrorists. Do you understand? Terroristes.”

  “What is this all about, exactly?” the chief asked.“I would like to know.”

  “We”ll tell you in the car,” Max answered. “Just so you know, it’ll ruin your night:”

  “Its already been ruined;” said the chief, heading toward his still-running SUV.

  ~29~

  MOROCCO, MAY 16, 2003

  Sitting at a small table outside the ticket office, Megan, her head and much of her face covered with the hood of her djellaba, watched as customs agents in gray-and-blue uniforms processed a long line of Moroccan nationals boarding the Tangier-to-Tafira ferry. Each one was questioned closely in Arabic or Berber, yesterday’s bombings very much on everyone’s minds. There was no proffering of baksheesh—the small bribes paid to bureaucrats across the Middle East to get them to do their jobs. Not today and probably not for the foreseeable future. Beyond the pier, with its hustle of activity, lay the long crescent-shaped spit of land that formed Tangier Bay. The day was windless and cloudless, and the sun beat down with all its strength and heat on the bay, turning it into a sheet of fiery turquoise rolling monotonously flat to the horizon. The ferry made the seventeen-mile-trip across the Strait of Gibraltar a dozen times a day. Europe lay there for the taking, so close you could see it from the hills above the bay. Megan watched three arrivals and departures, holding the neck of her hood across her distinctly Western mouth and nose. She spoke no Arabic or Berber, and the cash she had on her, about ten thousand euros, would do her no good. She thought briefly of returning to Abdullah’s family, of asking them to hide her or help her out of the country, but she quickly rejected this idea. Her last image of Hakim flashed into her mind. She had given him two thousand euros to bury Abdullah, which he had placed carefully into a brown paper bag that for some reason he had carried out of his uncle’s shop. As she drove off, before turning her attention to the side streets and alleys she would have to negotiate to get out of Sidi Moumim, she glanced in her rearview mirror, where she saw the boy looking intently into the bag. Then she remembered that while she was dying her hair he had swept up the thick clumps of it scattered around the floor and placed them with the same care into the bag, as if it were the most important thing he would ever do. No, she had visited enough upon Abdullah and his family.

  She hoped that Abdel al-Lahani was dead, but even assuming he was, she had no illusions that she was safe. Mohammed, who had probably killed Abdullah while trying to find her, would come after her. And if his master was alive, there would be no limit to his desire to find and kill her. She had nearly taken the life of the great Falcon. Had wounded his alpha male pride terribly. Had run off with his child in her belly. And worse, she knew his true identity. She could go to the authorities and help bring the Falcon to earth.

  This last option she had considered and rejected. She had the feeling that Lahani’s reach was very long. A Saudi national, he had easily gotten the Moroccan government to do his bidding in several instances that Megan knew of. Her special diplomatic visa was one example, the flagging of her passport another. Maybe she would go to the police one day, but first she would have her baby and make sure it was safe. In the meantime she would run and she would hide, using her wits and finally putting to good use the money she had made by selling her body, and more—the mystique of Megan Nolan—to men for the past twelve years.

  S
he was about to leave, to try to figure out another way of getting out of the country, when an elderly man in an expensive suit that hung loosely on his small, thin frame, sat down across from her at the table. She had been scanning her surroundings at regular intervals, but this man had not come on her radar screen. Until now.

  “I would like to make you an offer,” he said in French, without any preliminaries.

  Megan did not reply. She did not think the man was a threat to her. He was at least eighty, maybe more, and very frail-looking, his skin stretched across his facial bones like parchment, tendrils of his wispy white hair plastered to his forehead by sweat. Only his eyes, dark brown and alert like a bird’s, contained any sense of energy or strength.

  “You can board the ferry with me,” the old man said.“If you don’t have papers, I can get them for you:”

  “I have papers,” Megan said.

  “What kind of visa?”

  “Visitor’s.”

  “And a passport?”

  “Of course:”

  The old man looked around. The next ferry had arrived at the dock and the line of native boarders was beginning to form, though the customs agents had not yet set up their portable office, a podium and collapsible table. They would come out at the last minute, when the line of mostly Moroccan men in Western clothes had baked to a frazzle in the hot midday sun. The foreign national line, perhaps twenty people, had already passed through their checkpoint and were waiting in the shade of a frayed awning near the boarding ramp.

  “I have been watching you for the past two hours;” the man said, returning his steady gaze to Megan. ”You are very beautiful, though you are quite obviously trying to hide it. You are also brave, but afraid:”

  Megan smiled for the first time in two days.“What am I afraid of?” she asked. If he answered this question correctly the old man was a genius.

  “Your destiny has arrived:”

  “My destiny?” Megan smiled again.“Are you a fortune-teller?”

  “I am roma,” the old man said.“Gypsy. Yes, I have the second sight. The eyes of heaven are on you. You must be in great trouble to require such help:”

  Megan shook her head and looked over at the native customs line that had now begun to move in fits and starts as the two uniformed officers carefully checked the papers of each supplicant coming before them. Abdullah’s car was parked on a side street a few blocks away. She could drive south over the mountains and into the Sahara, or she could drive east and try to cross the border into Libya. There were no other options. To the west was the Atlantic ocean.

  “And in return?” she asked.

  “I am dying of cancer,” the old man said. “I would like to look at a beautiful young face as much as possible in the few months I have left:”

  “That’s all?”

  “The pain is starting;” the gypsy answered. ”I will need morphine, medical-quality morphine secured and administered. I do not believe in gadgo doctors and hospitals:”

  “How will you get me through? I don’t speak Arabic. The picture on my passport is not a good match:”

  “You are American, yes?”

  “Yes.”

  “I usually smuggle Moroccans into Spain, not Americans. But it will not be difficult. Who is looking for you?”

  “You don’t want to know.”

  “It is not a matter of want. I must assess the level of danger:”

  “It is very high:”

  “So it is not a lover, or a husband:”

  “It is a lover: the man who planned the bombings in Casa yesterday.”

  The old man’s thin white eyebrows raised slightly and the lids of his eyes lowered like curtains drawn halfway down a window. He stared at Megan for a long moment through the lower half.

  Your destiny has arrived as well, thought Megan.

  “Have you lost interest?” she asked.

  The old man shook his head.“Who has helped you to this point?” he asked.

  “A friend. He’s been killed:” Megan closed her eyes as images of Abdullah crossed her mind. He had kissed her on both cheeks and both hands when he handed her the vial of poison just after daybreak this morning. An ancient Coptic blessing on work to be done. His killer had nailed him to the floor through his Coptic cross.

  “You will become a gypsy,” the old man said. “With me you will never be found:”

  “Where would we live?”

  “In Paris:”

  “I will be hunted:”

  “I am wealthy and respected in my tribe. If I order it, you will be guarded day and night by people you will never see. A hundred eyes will watch over you. The curse of the dead, the mulo, would be visited on any gypsy who disobeyed me. Do you understand?”

  “Yes.”

  “What is your name?”

  “Megan Nolan. And you are ... ?”

  “My name is François Duval:”

  Megan stared again at the line approaching the customs agents.

  “There is no baksheesh today,” she said.

  “No, but I know these agents well. I have made them rich in the past ten years. And of course I have certain evidence that I can use against them if I wished to. It is the secret to success in my trade. You must have a man’s testicles in your pocket before you can trust him.”

  Megan smiled again despite herself.“Do you want money?” she asked.

  “No. I just want to look at you as I lay dying. What is the name on your passport?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “Show it to me and we will get in line:”

  Abdel al-Lahani lay on the plush custom-made sofa in his Casablanca penthouse. The corner of his left eye was ticking about once every five seconds, down substantially from the ten-times-per-second flutter of an hour ago, as if a hummingbird had landed on his eyelid. Sitting across from him were Mohammed and Ismael Saboori, an Iranian neurologist on the staff at the King Hassan University Medical School. Saboori held his small black leather physician’s bag on his lap, his untouched tea on a table beside him. Lalla, who had induced vomiting and then cleaned and dressed Lahani before calling Mohammed, could be heard in the kitchen.It was Mohammed who had called Saboori. The blood sample that the doctor had taken from Lahani’s arm lay in its ampule on the coffee table between them, next to an envelope that contained one thousand American dollars in new hundred-dollar bills.

  “And there is no antidote?” Lahani asked. The back of his left hand lay across his forehead, inside of which his brain seemed to be expanding and contracting in slow, exquisitely painful waves.

  “No,” Saboori replied, “just flushing, which has been done. The ticking and the headache should subside in a few hours. You apparently swallowed very little:”

  “And if they don’t?”

  “I will prescribe something, but they should:”

  “And the numbness?”

  “It should subside as well. The Amazon Indians use curare to kill their enemies. One milligram on the end of a dart is lethal. Orally it takes more. You will be fine:”

  Lahani nodded in dismissal. Saboori rose and picked up the envelope. “The blood should be tested soon,” he said.

  “We’ll do it,” Mohammed said. With a nod, Saboori turned and left.

  “I will leave for home tomorrow,” Lahani said to Mohammed when the doctor was gone.“You will stay here to see if she turns up:”

  “She may have left the country. She has money and could get papers. If that is the case, we will not easily find her.”

  “I will call Uncle al-Siddiq. He will put her on a watch list. She will appear. When she does we will go and kill her.”

  “It could be America:”

  “Wherever she turns up, we will go and kill her. I don’t care if it’s the White House or the vacant pit where the trade centers used to be. We will go and kill her. Do you understand?”

  “Yes, emir,” said Mohammed.“I understand:”

  ~30~

  PARIS, DECEMBER 16, 2003

  On th
e day of François Duval’s funeral in mid-December, Megan was awoken from a deep sleep by the sound of a mournful violin. By raising herself on one elbow, she could see down into the street. Her pregnant belly spread out on the bed. She could feel its weight and the baby kicking to start his day. For the past week, dozens of gypsy men of all shapes, sizes, and ages had gathered around a barrel fire in the cul-de-sac below, drinking whiskey, talking in whispers, and going off occasionally to pee in the weeds or berate their women. Standing alone by the barrel now was one of these men in a long dirty duster and wool cap playing the violin. He was leaning into the fire as he played. The low flames seemed to be dancing in response to his long piercing notes. The day was breaking warm and sunny, one of the beautiful late fall days that sometimes extend deep into a Paris winter. The music was both shrill and sweet, a metaphor for the gypsies themselves, Megan thought, reflecting on the last seven months of her life. An outcast among outcasts, she had been protected by the unchallenged and seemingly unchallengeable authority of the wily and feared Francois Duval. François had kept his word, and so had Megan. When the old man had died last night at midnight, she had been by his side.