by Tahir Shah
The American raised an eyebrow, surprised that she had adapted so readily to the reduction in luxury.
‘This is what we call the bled, the countryside,’ she said. ‘It’s sacred to all Moroccans, whether they’re from here or from the city. Its simplicity reminds us that we are all equal.’
After breakfast, Habiba fetched a shovel from the barn and set about digging up the sitting-room floor. She refused to allow Blaine to help her, insisting that it was her duty, a solemn duty she had undertaken to Mr. Omary.
It took half an hour to excavate the wooden box.
The sides were stained red from the dirt, and the top was battered where the shovel had struck it hard. Reaching down, Habiba removed it, praised God, and passed it to Ghita.
‘Open it up!’ said Blaine enthusiastically.
Ghita paused to mumble a prayer, and then prised off the lid.
Inside were three thick bundles of hundred-dollar bills, each one the size of a brick. Beneath them was a letter and locket.
Ghita ripped the envelope open and scanned its text.
‘My darling daughter,’ she read, ‘as I have always told you, Habiba is one of our family, and the bond we share with her is more highly valued to us than with anyone else we know. I am writing this letter at a time of grave danger. I can feel that forces here in Casablanca are conspiring against me. I don’t know who they are, or what their motive is, but I fear them. For this reason, I have entrusted this box to Habiba. I am certain that at a time of catastrophe you will seek her out. Inside, you will find enough funds to see yourself through turbulent times, and the locket your mother wore every day of her life.’
As she reached the end of the letter, Ghita’s eyes welled with tears.
‘Baba, wait for me,’ she said, ‘I am coming!’
Eighty-five
Once again, standard-issue boots marching over flagstones woke Hicham Omary from his sleep. Kept in perpetual darkness, he had no idea whether it was day or night.
For a full week he had not left the cell. In that time he had revisited a thousand memories, and pondered all kinds of philosophical questions, the kind for which there’s never quite time in the haste of normal life.
He found that by breaking the years down into an intricate flowchart of events, he could keep himself amused for hours at a stretch. The exercise drove away boredom – the curse of solitary confinement.
The boots moved in a rhythm, steel tips striking down hard on the stone. The sound grew louder as it approached Cell No. 3. Then silence. And a set of keys clattered in a primitive music of their own. Omary listened, waiting for the inspection hatch to open, and for the blinding shaft of low-watt light.
But, this time, another key was selected.
It sounded quite different as it slipped into the lock. It was larger and was serrated on both sides. Hicham Omary hadn’t been in the prison system long, but long enough to learn the ritual of keys.
For it was they alone that could deliver freedom.
The cell’s tempered steel door was pulled open fast. Jerking both hands over his eyes, Omary blocked the light, as his lungs expanded with what smelled like fresh mountain air.
The guard ordered the prisoner to stand.
Omary did so, adrenalin coursing through his bloodstream, as he struggled to make sense of what was going on. A grating sound followed, metal rasping on metal. His hands were cuffed behind his back, then attached by chains to the fetters around his ankles.
After that came the blindfold.
Not a puny half-hearted blindfold from a children’s birthday party, but a military-issue one of triple-thick hessian, with four straps.
Disorientated, the fetters cutting into his ankles and the handcuffs into his wrists, Omary was led inch by inch down the corridor.
At the end, he was turned around six times to the right, and six to the left. And, swaggering like a drunkard after a night on the town, he was taken calmly into the interrogation cell and forced down onto a stool.
There was warmth, glorious warmth from the interrogation lamps – lamps he could only feel but not see.
Omary listened.
He made out the call of the muezzin far away, although uncertain which prayer it could be calling. And, much closer, he heard the sound of a lighter clicking, being tossed onto a desk, and the stink of a cheap cigarette.
The interrogator drew a chestful of smoke into his lungs, exhaled, and signalled to the guard to lock the door. He had worked in the prison service for thirty years, and prided himself on being able to get the results desired by the authorities in Rabat.
Resting the cigarette on the edge of the desk, a desk speckled with little burns from a hundred other nights, he leafed through the dossier.
‘It says that you have a liking for heroin,’ the interrogator said in a chill well-practised voice.
‘Does it?’
‘Yes, it does. And it says that you have made a fortune in working for the criminal underworld.’
Omary flexed his back to relieve the pressure on his wrists.
‘Are you expecting me to confess to invented charges?’
‘No. But I am expecting you to answer my questions.’
The interrogator stood up.
He walked around the table, and untied the blindfold. Omary’s eyes were flooded with a tidal wave of high-watt light. Eager to avoid it, he glanced sideways and found himself focusing on the walls.
They were festooned with all kinds of equipment.
There were wooden batons and straps, a harness for suspending a prisoner upside-down, electric cables and tourniquets, syringes and a box of broken glass, a variety of blades and pliers. And, in an arrangement high on the back wall, were a selection of what looked liked meat hooks. And, on another hook, an apron was hung. It had been drenched in blood – some of it old, some of it new.
Unlike the movies, where interrogation rooms are usually pristine, the one in which Hicham Omary found himself was filthy from use. Like the apron, the tools and equipment were spattered in dirt and dried blood.
His gaze jolting from one detail to the next, Omary’s eyes came to rest on a drain just near the door. It was clogged with what looked like a lump of human skin and matted hair.
Eighty-six
By ten a.m. the Silver Ghost was back on the highway and, by noon, it was swerving its way through the rip-roaring traffic of Marrakech.
All around, there were mopeds veering to and fro in all directions, like a game of 3D Space Invaders. There were donkey carts, too, and throngs of bicycles, and watersellers ringing their great brass bells, and beggars weaving through the traffic in their wheelchairs.
‘Which way?’ asked Blaine at a crossroads.
‘That way, straight – towards the great minaret of Koutoubia.’
‘That’s Koutoubia? Fantastic! That’s where I’ve gotta pick up the trail for the next postcard.’
Ghita was about to rein the American in, but she cautioned herself. As he had reminded her – she needed him more than he needed her.
‘We’ll go there first,’ she said, ‘to get your postcard, and then we’ll go and find the goldsmith.’
Blaine eased the car to a halt.
‘Just park up there on the pavement,’ Ghita said.
‘But I’ll get towed.’
‘This is Marrakech, not Miami,’ she replied. ‘The police can be reminded that they are on our side.’
‘So I’ve noticed,’ said Blaine.
Mounting the kerb, he steered the Silver Ghost up to within a few feet of the mosque wall.
‘Koutoubia means “Booksellers”,’ said Ghita, ‘because there used to be bookstalls here.’
‘When was that?’
‘About a thousand years ago.’
Blaine wasn’t listening. His mind was on the postcard. He pulled it out and did his best to decipher the text on the back.
‘It says to ask at the “Old Lady”.’ He turned around and peered up at the great square minaret. ‘
This must be the Old Lady,’ he said, ‘but who to ask?’
Ghita frowned. She took the card from Blaine.
‘This was clearly written by a man in love,’ she replied. ‘I can always tell.’
‘Tell what?’
‘When a man is in love.’
‘Huh?’
‘You men are so poor at concealing your feelings.’
‘So, who was Bogart in love with?’
‘With the Old Lady, of course.’
Blaine nodded towards the mosque.
‘That Old Lady?’
‘Would a drunk American actor really have been in love with a mosque?’ said Ghita.
‘I guess not.’
‘So, where’s the Old Lady we need?’
‘La Grande Dame, The Mamounia, of course.’
Eighty-seven
A master in the art of anticipation, the interrogator could predict exactly the pain threshold of anyone trussed up in the seat before him.
His wife had spent decades begging him to stop, to find a less severe career. But, as he told her time and again, there was nothing quite so satisfying as extracting information from the lips of the unwilling.
Omary circumnavigated the questions, and tried to gauge where they were leading, if anywhere at all. He was asked about his father and his grandfather, about his income and his schooling, and about the scar on his right cheek.
The examination lasted an hour or more, but was nothing more than a warm-up for things to come. Lighting another cigarette, the interrogator blew out – the grey smoke billowing like a storm cloud into the light.
‘Now, Mr. Omary,’ he said, his tone deepening, ‘you are to tell me about the heroin. Where did it come from?’
His muscles fatigued with lactic acid, Hicham Omary struggled to keep his cool. He was damned if a two-bit torturer was going to ruffle him.
‘I’m a businessman, not a drug dealer,’ he replied.
‘I am looking for correct answers,’ the interrogator said. ‘And if I don’t get them, I shall use the equipment.’ He waved a hand towards the apparatus hanging on the walls. ‘I have a special treatment for everyone they send to me,’ he said.
‘Do you expect me to make something up, something to incriminate myself?’
‘I expect you to speak the truth.’
‘Then listen to me. I don’t know anything about the drugs I’m supposed to have bought or sold. And you know it as well as I. You can see it in my eyes. But if you’d like to continue this little charade, we can. You can pull out my teeth with those pliers. Or you can electrocute me with those wires, or cut me into little pieces with the knives. But my response is not going to change.’
‘My superiors in Rabat are waiting for your confession, and I have vowed to get it for them. But I think a few more days in the hole will soften you. You will return there now and be put on half rations, and a nice cold bath twice a day.’
The interrogator called out to the guard and, a moment later, Omary was hobbling forwards down the corridor. The blindfold had been left off, allowing him to look into the other cells as he went.
Unlike his own cubicle, the others had bars rather than a full steel door. The walls of the first were painted in black and white spirals, a ploy to drive a sane inmate mad. The next was spattered with a profusion of dark dried blood, from a suicide.
In the first cell, the prisoner was huddled up on the concrete floor. In the second, a convict was standing with his head in his hands. And the man in the third cell was tethered by a metre-long chain to the wall.
Staggering forwards, Omary got eye contact with him for a fleeting moment. The man’s eyes hung in an empty face, swollen with illness, with fear, with nights of treatment in the torture cell.
Until that moment, Hicham Omary managed to remain composed. But the sight of real terror, of a life hanging by a thread, was too much to bear.
As soon as he had been kicked back into his cell, the shackles removed, and the door slammed shut, he broke down and wept like he had never wept before.
Eighty-eight
The Rolls-Royce Silver Ghost ran alongside the ancient crenellated ramparts of the Marrakech medina. Coral pink and crumbling, the city walls were straight out of the Arabian Nights. Their entire surface was peppered with little square holes, used from time to time for scaffolding – and always by swallows for their nests.
Turning left through an arched gateway, Blaine took a sharp right into the forecourt of La Mamounia.
Ghita may have spent her life being chauffeured about, but the precise location of La Grande Dame was one she could describe with her eyes closed.
‘My father always says this is where his heart lies,’ she said quietly, as the zigzag shadows of palm fronds tumbled over the car.
Cloaked head to toe in white robes, a pair of towering guards swept forwards, opened the doors, and bestowed greetings.
Climbing the mosaic steps, the guests were showered in pink rose petals. And, once they were inside, a retinue of bearers offered moist towels, mint tea and fresh desert dates.
‘I guess it helps if you turn up in a Rolls-Royce,’ said Blaine in a whisper.
No sooner had the words left his mouth than a suave man in a hand-tailored suit hurried up. His hair was smoothed back, grey like a turtle dove, his complexion lightly tanned. The personification of sophistication, he was like a Hollywood leading man playing a hotel manager.
Without wasting a moment he embraced Ghita.
‘What a wonderful surprise, ma chérie!’ he declared. ‘How are you, my dearest, dearest Ghita?’ His expression faltering, he breathed in sharply. ‘But how awful what we have heard about Monsieur Omary. My prayers and those of the entire staff go out to him.’
Ghita gave thanks, and then presented Blaine.
The general manager shook the American’s hand firmly, the signet ring on his little finger catching the light.
‘Will you be requiring your usual suite, Mademoiselle?’
‘That would be wonderful, thank you Laurent,’ Ghita said, ‘and a single room as well for my friend.’ She paused, glanced up at the crystal chandelier, as it caught the afternoon light. ‘We are here on something of a treasure hunt. I believe that a former guest may have left an envelope for us.’
‘Would it be in your name, Mademoiselle?’
Blaine held up a hand.
‘No, not exactly. It would have been left in the name of a Mr. Bogart... a Humphrey Bogart.’
The general manager beckoned the duty manager from the shadows and whispered something into his right ear.
‘We will look into the matter,’ he said in a reassuring voice. ‘Now I must insist that you are my guests for lunch. I know that your father has a fondness for Don Alfonso’s cuisine.’
He led the way through the main body of the hotel, recently refurbished by Jacques Garcia, the celebrated French décoriste. There was a solemnity about the place, a sense of power. The ambience had been achieved through dim lighting, miles and miles of silk, and meticulous understatement.
At lunch, the menus were brought forward by a maître d’hôtel, but were waved away by Don Alfonso, who was horrified by the thought of Ghita Omary being offered anything available to any ordinary guest. Exclaiming his joy, he hurried into the kitchen to prepare a special meal, one that might satisfy the discerning taste of Mr. Omary himself.
Against the gentle sound of birdsong on the terrace, Blaine asked about Bogart.
‘Hollywood has had a long love affair with La Mamounia,’ the general manager replied, twisting his rings as he spoke. ‘Hitchcock filmed scenes in The Man Who Knew Too Much here. And we have hosted almost every star you can think of, from Charlie Chaplin to Humphrey Bogart.’
As if waiting for his cue, the duty manager stepped forward, bowed, and offered a silver salver to Blaine.
‘This was found in the archive, Monsieur.’
Squared on the salver’s burnished surface lay an antique envelope in ivory white. The words ‘To Be Co
llected’ were written in large black script over the front, and were complemented by Bogart’s signature.
‘That’s it!’ said Blaine quickly. ‘Thank you!’
Sliding the blade of a butter knife along the top edge, he removed a fourth postcard.
It showed a fine villa set amid ample gardens.
As before, he began to peel away the back. But, unlike the previous postcards, this one didn’t appear to have a secret message, just Bogart’s signature and a number – 07698.
‘Would you mind?’ said the manager, motioning for the card.
Blaine handed it to him.
‘Villa Mirador,’ he said.
‘Where is it?’
‘In Anfa, Casablanca’s quartier majestique. It was there that the Allied Summit was held early in 1943. When it ended, Churchill brought Roosevelt down here to stay at La Grande Dame, and to paint the snows of the Atlas, as viewed from the balcony of his suite.’
‘Villa Mirador,’ said Ghita absently. ‘I’ve been to receptions there. It’s the residence of the American consul, even now. Quite a house, one soaked in history.’
The general manager propped up the postcard on the silver pepper mill.
‘What are your plans, Mademoiselle?’ he asked.
‘We’re going to the mountains to...’ She fell short of finishing the sentence, and touched a finger to her cheek. ‘To see an old friend,’ she said.
Eighty-nine
Standing at the heart of Marrakech, itself the beating heart of the desert, lay the great square of Jma al Fna.
Its name, meaning ‘The Place of Execution’, hinted at a macabre sliver of history. Nudged up at the side of the medina, the square was peopled by tourists and by storytellers, by healers and by acrobats, the one corner in the kingdom owned by everyone whose feet passed through.
Ghita led the way between the knots of entertainers drawing crowds in the late afternoon. She didn’t like the square, thought it stank, and regarded it as a place where thieves and conmen vied for business beneath the African winter sun.
She pointed to a medicine man decked out in pale blue Tuareg robes, a trace of gold embroidery running around the line of his collar. Laid out on a carpet before him was an array of home-made potions and tonics, and all manner of curious ingredients.