by null
Vladimirovitch picked up the prayer cap, put it on his head, and began goose-stepping around like a Red Army trooper in a May Day parade. Babenco knelt and scooped up the dirhams and stuffed them into the waistband of his Speedo. Dessalines kicked the pen knife and keys into the steaming pool. Solas watched, his green eyes narrowing with pleasure. Now they were going to have some fun! Nur’din, temporarily unconscious, came back to himself upside down.
“Put me down, dirty nigger African!” he managed. “Let me go! Dog! Slave!”
“The man’s clearly a racist,” Babenco called. “Smash his head against the wall!”
The Russian said nothing.
“What should I do with him, chef?” Dessalines said to Solas.
Solas smiled lazily. “Let’s see how long he can hold his breath underwater.”
Dessalines stepped over to side of the pool, lowered the Moroccan head-first, and held him down there for a long minute before pulling him back up. Nur’din choked out much water, gasping for air.
“T’as attrape un poisson assez laid!” Vladimirovitch said, laughing.
“Put me down! Police!” Nur’din shouted. “Help!”
“Man wants the police,” Dessalines drawled.
“This time try two minutes,” Solas said quietly. “See if that doesn’t shut him up. Here, I’ll time it.” And he made a point of setting the second hand on his watch.
Nur’din wouldn’t survive another prolonged dunking. Already the blotches of pink in front of his eyes and the prickly shapes of upside-down cacti were mutating into green waves of oxygen deprivation. In the moment before they lowered him into the hot, ultrachlorinated water for a second time, he began to scream.
8.
Pinard and Szbeszdogy, coming up the Agadir’s front steps, heard the terrified screaming from the pool beyond the lobby.
“Putain!” Szbeszdogy swore. “It’s those assassins!”
They broke into a run. When they reached the courtyard, Nur’din the waiter had been under water upside down for thirty-five more seconds, his lungs about to burst.
“Pull him out—!” Pinard almost said Legionnaire, but caught himself since these oiled monsters were supposed to be the marketing team from Club Med Western Sahara and not a squad of covert Foreign Legion assassins. But while it is perhaps possible to turn a marketing executive into an assassin, the reverse is another matter.
“Tiens, voilà nos petits musicians,” Solas said, a casual contempt in his voice. The order was not obeyed.
Pinard felt a stirring in the air, sensed the subtle workings of le cafard and knew enough of this affliction to know the situation required careful maneuvering or mutiny would ensue and one or more of them would die. Szbeszdogy held back, a thumb on the safety catch of the .22 caliber Walther he kept hidden in the waistband of his pants. Behind him, in the air-conditioned lobby, the hotel staff slept oblivious; the desk clerk, taking his siesta, snored on a gorgeous Mediouna carpet on the floor behind the front desk.
“I gave you a direct order,” Pinard said, approaching Solas and keeping his voice low. “Do you take it upon yourselves to disobey your superior officer?”
“This little conasse called me a nigger,” Dessalines said. “I’m expected to forget about that? My feelings are hurt!”
“Release him!” Pinard said, but directly to Solas, the instigator, he knew, of this unfortunate incident.
Dessalines glanced from Pinard to Solas and down to the Moroccan waiter drowning in the pool, the last bubbles of the man’s breath breaking across the surface. Pinard kept his eyes locked on Solas. Relentless malice lingered there in the green Brazilian depths.
“You will confine yourself and your team to quarters at once, Caporal-chef,” Pinard said. “Drinking at this hour of the day is absolutely forbidden. Especially”—he jerked his chin at the dozens of beer bottles strewn about—“in these outrageous quantities!”
Solas yawned and said nothing. Another five seconds passed. They might have been standing on a street corner in Rio, waiting for an electric bus. Pinard pushed his face closer; his nose now just a few centimeters from the Brazilian’s.
“You’re drunk,” he hissed. “You’re endangering this mission. That’s enough to send you to the Juras for fifteen years.”
“Va te faire mettre, Pinard,” the Brazilian said quietly. Pinard made a quick sign to Szbeszdogy and the Hungarian drew out the Walther and tossed it over. Pinard snatched the pistol out of the air with a nifty backhand grab and in the same motion clicked off the safety and brought its stubby barrel to bear against Solas’s forehead.
“My dedication to this mission is total and if I’ve got to kill you to preserve it, I will. You have three seconds to pull that man out of the pool before I blow your brains out,” he said through his teeth. “Un . . . deux . . .”
Before three Solas nodded and Dessalines lifted Nur’din from the pool and dropped him face-first to the concrete. The waiter wasn’t breathing. Pinard threw himself down and began to administer CPR. He pumped the man’s arms, ballooned his cheeks with breath. Soon great gushes of pool water emanated from the man’s mouth, along with that morning’s breakfast of couscous and chickpeas. The battered and half-drowned Nur’din revived, sputtering and coughing, at last, and rolled over and vomited more pool water and chickpeas onto the pebbly concrete. After a long minute, panting for breath, he rose unsteadily to his feet and limped off, dripping, into the lobby.
“Arab pig!” Dessalines called after him. “Next time you will have more respect for the black man!” And the other assassins laughed.
Suddenly, Pinard balled up his fist and drove it hard into Solas’s nose and felt the bone crack beneath his knuckles. The Brazilian stumbled and cried out; his nose bent unnaturally to one side, spurting blood. He fumbled for the stiletto he always carried in his pocket, but he was wearing his Speedo now, a tight garment without pockets of any kind. Again Pinard shoved the Walther against Solas’s forehead, this time driving him back into the pool. The Brazilian toppled over and hit with a splash, blood from his nose billowing red in the chlorine-blue water. Then Pinard swung around and brought the Walther to bear on Solas’s comrades, who had sprung up, ready to defend their chief.
“I was willing to shoot Solas and I’m willing to shoot all of you,” he said through his teeth. “I’ll say in my report that you were killed by Marabout spies, that we came back to the hotel and found you all massacred. Szbeszdogy will back me on it, won’t you, Szbeszdogy?”
“Oh, yes,” Szbeszdogy said. “Absolutely.”
“Now, you, le Russe”—he pushed the Walther roughly against Vladimirovitch’s solar plexus—“repeat article six of the Code of Conduct.”
Vladimirovitch balked but Pinard only pushed harder.
“ ‘A Legion mission is sacred,’ ” the Russian said reluctantly. “ ‘A mission is worth more than the lives of individual Legionnaires. Once begun, it will be concluded. Once begun, it will be pursued without passion and without hate, until the end, at all costs.’ ”
“Thank you, Legionnaire,” Pinard said, and he lowered the Walther. The 4e RE assassins seemed chastened by these words. They stood, eyes downcast, hands at their side, awaiting orders, soldiers again. Solas pulled himself out of the pool, dripping water and blood.
“Go take care of that nose,” Pinard said. Then to all of them: “We’ll forget this incident. Blame it on the cafard. We’re all spoiling for action and I assure you, it’s coming. Until then, you’re confined to quarters. Dismissed!”
The men trailed off. Pinard put his gun away and began policing the beer bottles strewn around the courtyard.
“That wasn’t so good,” Szbeszdogy said.
“Bad,” Pinard agreed.
“I’ll be honest.” Szbeszdogy lowered his voice. “That Brazilian bastard scares me. It’s those eyes—they’re like the eyes of an intelligent animal. He’s going to kill you for what you did to him. Unless—” He squinted up at the hot, miserable sky.
Pinard stopped policing the beer bottles and looked at his comrade.
“Unless what?”
“You kill him first. Soon.”
9.
Because of the poolside incident at the Agadir and after a visit from the local gendarmes, and even though a large illegal bit of baksheesh changed hands, the Legionnaires were forced to change hotels. Laayoune is a large city of perhaps three hundred thousand, no one is quite sure exactly; for political reasons, the inhabitants of the Saharoui souk are never accurately counted. But Laayoune supported only a couple of hotels rated more than one star—the Agadir and the Hotel Palais-Maroc—the former now off-limits to the Legionnaires, the latter entirely occupied by UN personnel working out a timetable for the closure of MINURSO team sites and for the general retreat of all UN forces from the Non-Self-Governing Territory of Western Sahara, this side of the Berm and in Algeria. Indeed, from anywhere the Marabout insurgency might oppose their ineffectual and vaguely benevolent agenda with terror and decapitation.
The MINURSO Mission Command Coordinator, the Dutch pacifist General van Snetters, was one of those modern soldiers who had never been involved in combat operations of any kind, his only experience in the field being humanitarian in nature. He was, in fact, a recent convert to a neo-Hindu sect that preached the wearing of lavender garments, a strict vegan diet, and non-violence under all circumstances, even under imminent threat of death. It was nobler and more holy, General van Snetters now firmly believed, to let the bastards kill you than to kill the bastards—a fine sentiment for a Hindu bodhisattva, but not, probably, for a general. Wearing the amulets and tiny silver bells of his new theology and a fancy Dutch general’s hat, van Snetters was at that moment ensconced in air-conditioned comfort in the midst of his staff on the top floor of the Palais-Maroc, arranging for the delivery of vegan meals to all UN personnel during the pullout. This, while the Royal Moroccan Army and Polisario exchanged vicious shrapnel-packed mortar rounds daily across the Berm, exactly as they have done for the last forty years. And the Marabouts prowled the darkness of the desert, even unto the outskirts of Laayoune itself, sharpened scimitars at the ready, avidly hunting the heads of all nonbelievers.
10.
The rooms of the Hotel Djinn were not air-conditioned and were unfurnished except for metal bunk beds and a few scraps of colorful but moth-eaten Zaiane carpet from the mountains of the Middle Atlas, hundreds of miles to the north. The Djinn was an ancient no-star facility in a rundown quartier of the city. Its four stories of mud brick overlooked the Saharoui souk two streets away. Spotlights from the Moroccan machine gun towers trailed twice every five minutes across the crumbling facade.
The personnel of Mission: SCORPIO took the entire top floor, with Pinard and Szbeszdogy in one room and the 4e RE assassins across the hall in two others. At midnight—the preappointed time—with the assassins locked safely in their rooms like misbehaving children, Pinard took out the satellite phone, punched in the scramble code, and called Legion headquarters in Aubagne. Tonight, for the first time since leaving France, he reached General le Breton. Pinard stood in the tall, open window where reception was best, stepping aside discreetly whenever the Moroccan spotlights swung his way.
“Did you read my report, sir?” Pinard said. “It went out in code via Internet last Tuesday.”
“I read your report. A bunch of trash. How long have you been down there?”
“Thirty-seven days,” Pinard said.
“Thirty-seven days”—the general’s voice quickly rising as usual to the level of a roar—“and all you’ve got for me is one pitiful Frenchwoman on holiday?”
“The Marabouts are impossible to infiltrate,” Pinard protested. “No one on the street wants to talk about them, no one will even admit they exist. We’re still trying to find a way into the Saharoui souk. We’re sure the Marabouts have a presence there, but access is proving difficult, the main gates are guarded by Moroccan soldiers and off-limits to everyone who’s not a Saharoui. And what do we do when we get inside? If you would allow me to make contact with the Moroccan authorities here—perhaps offer money for information—they might be willing to share some intelligence. The Minister of Tourism already suspects—”
But the general cut him off. “This is a Legion mission, Pinard! And the Legion takes care of its own. Absolute secrecy will be maintained.”
“Oui, mon general.”
“And the Legion does not pay. Not a ransom and certainly not for information. The Legion makes them pay, with their lives if necessary. Reçu, Pinard?”
“Reçu, mon general.”
A pause. The signal, bouncing from earth to satellite to earth again, crackled with distance. Pinard imagined the general sitting on the side of his bed in green silk pajamas in the comfort of his quarters on officer’s row in Aubagne. One of the Kaybile whores from the 1e RE brothel, perhaps La Mogador herself (the general, a bachelor, often had a girl delivered directly to his bed against regulations), no doubt now slept naked and exhausted after satisfying the fat man’s notorious appetites.
“What about morale?” the general asked presently.
Pinard failed to describe the near mutiny of the 4e RE that afternoon by the Agadir’s pool.
“We moved hotels,” he said. “Too much alcohol at the other one. But I do think the men are getting a little restless. The cafard—”
“Le cafard n’existe pas!” the general shouted. “It’s a myth, another word for failure of leadership.”
“Oui, mon general.”
“You know, I’m beginning to suspect my confidence in your abilities was misplaced! A complete lack of nerve, that’s what you’ve got!”
Pinard thought it best not to respond to this accusation.
“Bon, bon, retournons aux nos moutons,” the general huffed. “Tell me about Louise. What has she been doing the last few days?”
Pinard pictured the woman at the Colline des Oiseux, Louise de Noyer, his colonel’s beautiful wife. He closed his eyes for a moment and saw her pale face in the sun and shadow of the alleys lined with empty aviaries.
“Madame de Noyer remains under surveillance,” Pinard said. “On Tuesday, I detailed Legionnaire Szbeszdogy to follow her full time, but she can’t be followed everywhere in a town like this without arousing suspicion. So far, she still behaves like a tourist. I believe she’s seen everything there is to see in this depressing place—which is possible in a single afternoon. Szbeszdogy reports she often takes a taxi to the beach. She spends entire afternoons out there lying on the sand.”
“Ah!” General le Breton exclaimed. “You see what I mean by failure of leadership?”
“Pardon, mon general?”
“You leave such an important matter to a subordinate! This woman might lead you directly to her husband—why else did she vanish from France and turn up in Laayoune? Certainly she’s trying to locate him, perhaps she’s offering baksheesh for information even as we speak. Stick close, I mean very close. But do not under any circumstances reveal your identity to her. Her politics are very far to the left, she’s antimilitarist, anti-French, and despises the Legion. Wait, I’ve got her dossier here”—the sound of some papers being shuffled—“ ‘Louise de Noyer; family name Vilhardouin. Illegitimate daughter of well-known radical singer—’ ”
“You don’t mean that Vilhardouin?” Pinard gasped.
“Yes, imbecile!” the general bellowed. “That Vilhardouin! The one who should have been put against a wall and shot back in ’68! Now do you get the picture?”
“Oui, mon general.”
“Bon. Make contact, but be careful.”
“I’ll relieve Szbeszdogy. I’ll follow Madame de Noyer myself.”
“Don’t sound so glum, Pinard! It’s not exactly punishment duty! She’s not so bad-looking, am I right?”
“An attractive woman,” Pinard said stiffly.
“And for your information, she’s definitely not a nun.” The general paused, chuckling. “A couple of confidential reports in th
is dossier make the Autobiography of Catherine M. look like kids’ stuff. So talk to her, get to know her. If you need to fuck her to gain her confidence, then fuck her!”
Pinard bristled at this. “The wife of a fellow officer—”
“Results, Pinard!” the general roared. “I don’t care how you get them! Otherwise you’ll face a court martial for incompetence when the Legion drags your ass back to Aubagne!”
11.
Pinard stood in the window for a long time, smoking the last of his French cigarettes, watching the Moroccan spotlights trail over the blind alleys and covered walkways of the souk, across the pendulous nodes of cumulonimbus clouds. He, no less than his men, was in the grip of the cafard. In him, the ailment manifested itself as a kind of melancholy introspection, even though his better judgment told him that for a soldier, introspection is best avoided. Now sad images from his past piled in drifts like dry leaves against unexamined longings, deeply held fears.
He thought of his childhood, back in Canada, a subject as a rule banished from his conscious mind. He’d been an unhappy child. No one tending to the scabs on his knees, few friends, brutal experiences at school, the unhappiness so pervasive he’d grown used to it, aware of it only as one is aware of breathing. His mother, often drunk by ten in the morning, brought men home from the run-down taverns of Ours Bleu nearly every night. His father, the only bright spot, but always away in the far north, came home rarely (once sporting an eye patch like a pirate, the result of an industrial accident), bringing tales of polar bears and sea lions and ice floes, the arctic cold clinging to his coat, his skin. Now, after all these years, Pinard recalled a forgotten incident: His father once brought him a little scrimshaw ivory tusk, intricately carved with a battle scene between Inuits and Frenchmen. On one side the Inuits were fighting valiantly, the Frenchmen winning with guns and cannons against spears; on the other side all the Frenchmen were dead, the Inuits improbably victorious. The young Pinard studied this little tusk for hours, carried it in his pocket to school, kept it under his pillow—whatever happened to it? He couldn’t remember now, the years had swept it away, but he still remembered that battle scene, bold and terrifying at once. Forget the judge’s order, the official choice of deportation or the Legion. Maybe that bit of tusk was why he’d become a soldier.