The Carpet Cipher

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The Carpet Cipher Page 24

by Jane Thornley


  I tried to nod, struggling to speak. He loosened his grip. Now there was a woman standing over us who picked up my gun and spoke to her companion in Arabic, maybe. The man climbed off me and together they hoisted me to my feet.

  “You will do what we say,” she said, pointing my gun on me. Great—two armed people. Where was the third? “Give me the bag,” she demanded.

  “My carpetbag? You want the diagram, don’t you? Well, good luck with that. It’s inscrutable,” I said.

  I could tell they didn’t grasp my meaning. “Inscrutable: unreadable, useless!” I clarified.

  “You will tell us meaning or we kill you,” the man snarled. He stepped forward as if to strike me but the woman stayed his hand.

  “No. We want her to think, Omar,” she warned. “The bag!” She wrenched it off my shoulder and I could do nothing but watch as she dumped the contents onto the tiles. In a moment she had the vellum unfolded and was staring at it in the half-light. “What is the meaning?”

  “Who are you?” I asked.

  “Shut up. What is the meaning?"

  “I don’t know, I said.”

  “But you know.” She was fixing me with her drilled-deep eyes. They looked so much alike, the two of them, like flip sides of a gender coin. Same tanned skin, same bony faces and thick black curly hair.

  “No, I don’t,” I said. “I can’t figure it out.”

  “You will tell us or you die,” she said, waving the pistol at me.

  “Where is our brother? What did you do with Yousef?” the man demanded, threatening me with every inch of his wiry frame.

  “Yousef? Is that the guy who killed the courier? He’s your brother? I don’t know where he is. I shot him in the leg but he got away on his bike.”

  “You lie. He called, said he got diagram,” Omar said, poking the air before my nose with his finger. “You chased him! You got diagram back!” He so wanted to hit me, I could tell.

  Three could play at this. “Okay, so I did chase him, straight into an orange grove off the highway. He was losing a lot of blood and fell off his bike so I took the diagram back. That’s where I left him. You’d better go make sure he’s okay instead of wasting time with me.”

  Not a good idea mentioning the blood part. The two of them exchanged glances, which was all the time I needed to knock the gun out of the woman’s hand with a sharp uplift while shoving Omar against the door with my shoulder. His shot rang wild, aiming for the stars, as I scrambled off.

  Five seconds or less was all I had as I snatched up the diagram. No time to wrestle a gun, too. Seconds only to get myself out of the range of fire and away, which meant only one thing: I had to jump, this time right over the edge of the terrace roof.

  19

  I bolted to the side of the stairwell housing to where the air-conditioning unit hugged a low wall and flung myself over it as full of prayer as I ever had been in my life and I mean multidenominational prayer. I had no idea what was on the other side except that it wasn’t the street. And like an idiot I closed my eyes and held my breath as if I were diving, the diagram gripped between my fingers.

  But I ended landing on my feet no more than four feet down. And took off in a mad scrabble across the tiles, tucking the vellum into my shirt on the run. Noel had mentioned his route from the street to the roof but all I cared about was the reverse path. Since the riad backed up against a maze of buildings crammed together, I knew this one had to be the route he’d taken.

  All I wanted was to get away from the killer duo and warn Peaches as soon as I could risk pulling out my phone. That meant I had to get off the roofs to a safe place but had no idea which direction to take. Noel hadn’t exactly drawn me a map. Twice I tripped over a cable and pitched flat on a corrugated surface and once I banged into one of the satellite dishes that sprouted out from the roofs like slanted mushrooms. It was a crazy, uneven surface and the moonlight and starshine only baffled me with shadows.

  Once, out of breath and dizzy after a stumble, I turned to see the figure of a man balancing with a gun in hand silhouetted against the deep azure sky maybe fifty feet away. I hauled myself to my feet and launched in a crouching run beside a low wall, keeping deep in the shadows. My best hope was to lose him in this maze of broken concrete and misshapen mounds. If I arrived at a drop too deep to jump, I’d scuttle off in another direction, maybe duck behind a chimney, or under a tent, or up a low promontory. People used these roofs, I realized. Signs of daytime occupation were evident in the laundry lines, the chairs pulled up inside little concrete terraces, the rooftop grills.

  I kept going like this for maybe fifteen minutes until I noticed that the roofscape had changed from rough-scrabble to newer, more decorative and upscale materials. Now I appeared to be on some sprawling multilevel roof complex with white decorative trim. This must be the air-conditioning and ventilation area for some big building. With no signs of Omar, I figured I must have shaken him at last so I took a moment to slump behind an ornate chimney and speed-dial Peaches.

  “Where the hell are you!” she hissed.

  “Somewhere over the medina being chased by one of the killers,” I whispered. “They attacked me on the roof. Have you seen them? One, maybe both, must still be at the riad. The important thing is that I escaped with the diagram.”

  “Well, shit, woman, don’t you have all the fun? All I get to do is babysit the Merediths. Evan just arrived and the doorbell woke them up. He’s calming them down now with more charm than I’ve seen from a man. Hell, and I thought my daddy could lay it on. He’s telling him he’s your boyfriend.”

  “Seriously?”

  “Yeah, seriously. Speaking of boyfriends, is Noel with you?”

  I peeked out from behind the chimney, quickly pulling myself back. “Noel’s gone somewhere. Where is he when he might actually be useful? So far I’m fine, thanks for asking. The others have to be somewhere in the riad. Watch out. There’s two left out there that we know of, remember, not counting the one chasing me. Got to go.”

  “Wait, Evan wants to talk to you.”

  There was a muffle and then: “Phoebe? Where are you exactly?”

  He said my name. Crazy what a little thing like that will do. “I don’t know,” I said. “I just took off across the roofs after they tackled me.”

  “Text me the coordinates from your phone and I’ll find you.”

  “No!” I whispered. “Don’t leave Peaches and the Merediths alone.”

  “The killers are only interested in you. Text me the coordinates, I said. Never mind, I’ll track you.” Then he clicked off.

  He’ll track me, shit. Shoving the phone back into my pocket, I crept up to the wall. I needed to find my way down to the street somehow. I peered down three stories seeing nothing but handfuls of people strolling along a well-lit boulevard. There was a guy in a fez wearing some kind of uniform directly underneath me, maybe the doorman of this establishment. No way down that way.

  I turned. Behind me stood a small square building that I was beginning to recognize as an enclosure for the top of a stairwell. They were all over the roofs of the medina. Some led to sunning terraces, others to technical equipment like air-conditioning and ventilation units. Each one had a door and every door I’d tried that night had been locked. This one was no exception.

  Now what? I’d arrived at a dead end of sorts, and unless I felt like climbing up and balancing along a partition that separated the business end of the building from whatever lay on the other side, I’d have to retrace my steps. Hoisting myself up onto a ventilation housing, I peered over the wall that ran deep across the complex. It was like gazing down on a fantasy palace straight out of Ali Baba. This must be a hotel designed like a monstrous riad, all the varying terraces lit like some magical playground for the very rich.

  Below was a small pool set in what seemed to be a cozy terrace area with a little bar tucked into a copse of flowering trees. To my left, a filigreed border of arches separated a much larger pool dropped into the center of
a spacious balconied courtyard. Yet another small raised terrace sat under an awning in the corner to my right. The whole place wafted money along with the scent of jasmine and orange blossoms but nobody stirred that I could see. Music played from speakers tucked out of sight. Gorgeous or not, there was no easy way down and I had no doubt that security would be tight. Nothing obvious like barbed wire but alarms had to be everywhere.

  A sound behind me made me turn. Light-blinded, I couldn’t see anything at first but I could hear heavy breathing and something like a curse in another language. I’d been found.

  I watched as the shadow man approached while I considered my options. Tackling him in armed combat could only be a last resort. I wasn’t good enough to risk it unless I had to. Escaping was preferable. I swung back to the wall—a long lantern-lit crenellated border of concrete with drops to various levels, none I wanted to think about jumping. My best chance was to head to the right where the raised dais with its cushions and awning promised a soft landing. At least it was a ten-foot drop there instead of a thirty to fifty one—my best chance to keep limbs intact.

  Omar lunged forward while I sprung for the wall. It was easy to hoist myself up but hellishly hard to stay upright once I got there. Maybe a foot wide with the lantern crenellations positioned every two feet, balancing on that surface would be fine if I didn’t need to lift one leg periodically to cross a lamp. As for speed, forget it. Omar, on the other hand, was damn good at this while I got hit by vertigo within seconds.

  I had no choice but to try stoop-crawling next, which worked long enough for me to scramble across the steepest part of the drop. Completely focused on maneuvering the obstacles, I didn’t pay attention to anything else until I heard Omar speak only a few yards away. “Stop, Phoebe McCabe, or I shoot,” he hissed.

  “No, you won’t,” I called back. “You need me alive.”

  “Alive, yes, not whole. You hurt brother, I hurt you.”

  A quick look over my shoulder saw him watching me with a calculating look, his gun pointed right at me. Shit! I jumped up and made a running leap over the next few lanterns, propelled more by fear than sense. A shot cracked out and hit a lantern near my left foot. Somebody screamed as I jumped down into the awning.

  And kept falling deeper into folds of some kind of striped silk that completely covered me as the tent ripped off its tethers and sent me falling into a mound of pillows. I heard cries and shouts as I struggled to release myself from my silken cocoon. It took me seconds to realize I was the one doing the screaming.

  Somebody arrived to me to help me unwrap. After the last fold of silk had been pulled away, I saw a startled-looking woman standing there with a bougainvillea flower tucked behind her ear. “Are you okay?” American accent. “My boyfriend and I were at the bar and then I heard you scream,” she said while untangling the rest of the fabric from my feet.

  “I’m okay, just shaken up, thanks. He tried to rob me.” I turned to see Omar struggling with two fez-hatted men—waiters, maybe. “Him!” I pointed. “He attacked me! I was sitting here and he jumped on me and wanted to steal my cash!”

  “She lies!” Omar cried, but the gun that had fallen to the tiles didn’t add to his credibility. Suddenly two security guards came dashing onto the terrace, one speaking into his walkie-talkie, the other rushing to pick up the gun. A man in a suit arrived, brass name tag fastened to his shiny blue bolero chest.

  I went into wronged damsel mode. “What’s the meaning of this? I come up here to relax and suddenly this…this creature attacks me! What kind of hotel is this where security is so lax?”

  “Madam, madam, we are very sorry,” the suited man said, hands open. He spoke rapidly to the security team in Arabic and they tackled the protesting Omar to the ground. “We endeavor to keep our guests safe. This is very unusual, very rare. We are so very sorry. What can we do to make it up to you?”

  “I’m going to my room. You can talk to me later.”

  “Wait, lady, the police are on their way. You must tell them what happened,” the manager called.

  I was halfway to the door. “You can see what happened,” I said over my shoulder. “An armed man broke into your hotel and tried to rob a guest. Now, I need to rest. I’ll talk to the police when they come.”

  Which was soon by the sounds of the sirens pealing from somewhere outside. The last thing I needed was for someone to figure out that the tent had encompassed me from the outside in, not the other way around or that I wasn’t even registered at the hotel. No, I needed to get away and fast.

  The lobby was akin to a long carpeted portico with the oasis-like pool area gleaming through the arches. I bounded downstairs but soon forced myself into a nonchalant stride. Guests were standing around talking excitedly about something that had happened on the roof. News travels fast.

  I sailed straight past them all, through the whispering automatic doors, and onto the street. In seconds I was striding away from the sirens and pulling out my phone to figure out where I was exactly.

  A man strode up behind me. “Just keep walking, Phoebe,” he said, linking my arm with his.

  20

  “Make like we’re a couple,” Evan whispered, pulling me close as we strode rapidly down the street arm-in-arm. “The police will be all over here in a minute. Are you hurt?”

  “I’m fine,” I said, “but Omar is going to jail.”

  “Omar is one of the gang, I take it. How did you escape this time?”

  I gave my summary, assuring him that much was pure luck.

  “Did you use the phone’s taser feature?” he asked, looking down at me at last.

  “What taser feature?”

  “The one where you hold down the home button and the volume button simultaneously, which signals the phone to temporarily emit a taser-like shock—very handy for disabling attackers. It’s hot off the desk, so to speak. I’ve yet to see it tried out on a living thing.”

  “You don’t test on animals, do you?”

  He looked shocked. “Absolutely not! I only test on deserving humans.”

  “Good, but no, I did not use the taser feature since I didn’t know about it,” I hissed.

  “The directions are very clear on the cheat sheet,” he said with mock chagrin.

  “Do you mean that lengthy tome you printed up? That is not a cheat sheet, Evan, that is an instruction booklet minus an index. I suggest that you master the point form.”

  He grinned. “My apologies, madam. I note that I must deploy brief teaching videos in the future.”

  “Yeah, you do that. Put it right up there with the Evan call button.”

  He smiled as we continued rapidly along, him steering me into a little path between the crush of buildings. “This way. So, I understand that Halloren arrived,” he said, his tone suddenly serious.

  “Unfortunately, yes. He claims that he’s been keeping an eye out for me. Apparently he’s been camped out on the riad roof since we arrived. He’s gone now.”

  “Don’t believe it. He’s here for a reason and it’s not about you, no matter what he claims.”

  I pulled my arm from his. “Forget Noel. He’s the least of our problems considering that, whoever this gang is, there are two more left out there—a woman and another brother we have yet to see. Both have to be nearby. Two down, two to go, in other words. How are we supposed to decipher this diagram with them waiting to pounce?”

  “I doubt that they’ll pounce until we’ve uncovered the hidden dowry. Why not let us do all the work? But we’ll be ready for them by then. If my hunch is correct, they’ve been anticipating that moment since you arrived and are probably growing a bit impatient about now. That’s probably why that guy accosted you tonight.”

  “Only, Omar was also itching for payback because I shot his brother. Forget that Yousef killed a courier and snatched away that diagram in the first place. If the sister hadn’t intervened, I’d have more than a bruised cheek.”

  “You killed him?” he asked sharply.

&
nbsp; “No, I didn’t kill him. I shoot to disable, never to kill, contrary to the assassins’ creed or whatever. Noel killed him.”

  “Just his style. Is the diagram still in good condition? I saw it before the contessa packed it away to the courier service.”

  “As safe as a seven-hundred-year-old piece of lambskin can be after a few wild dashes onto the desert air.” I stopped and looked around. “I recognize this lane.”

  “The riad is just ahead.”

  “And Noel’s motorcycle was parked right over here.” I strode up to the broken wall and peeked over. “And it’s gone.”

  “And the man with it, I trust.”

  Somehow I doubted that. A part of me still hoped he’d be waiting in the wings ready to help at the last minute.

  We crossed the courtyard and dashed down the alley, Evan watching our backs as I inserted the key card and pushed open the door.

  “There you are!” June was on me as soon as I stepped into the courtyard. “What is the meaning of this, Penny, waking us up with your gentlemen callers and causing a commotion in general? Have you no consideration for your fellow guests?”

  Peaches rolled her eyes behind her.

  “June, sorry for the disruptions. I—”

  “Disruptions? Is that what you call it when someone spends a fortune to ensure a delightful Moroccan holiday only to have a single disrespectful guest disturb her peace again and again?” She was standing in front of me with her arms crossed over her magenta bathrobe, eyes flaming indignation. For some reason, I noticed her earrings. She slept wearing dangles? “First thing in the morning, you can be sure I will be lodging my complaint. What kind of guest goes out at all times of the night and requires a man to fly in and bring her home? Disgusting.” She turned on her gold-tooled Moroccan slippers and marched toward the stairs. “Come along, Joe.”

  Joe had been staring at Evan as if he’d just manifested out of a genie bottle but now scurried after her like an obedient puppy.

 

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