by Jon Land
The building’s interior was even more detailed. There were several rooms, separated by majestic archways. Private tables, undoubtedly available only at a premium rate, sat apart in the many alcoves, and the soft light of regularly spaced imitation candelabras cast the rooms in the kind of murky haze that might have been called atmosphere. The tapestries and artwork were detailed replicas, the squat white piano a twin of Sam’s with a young black man sitting behind it playing his hourly rendition of “As Time Goes By” minus the lyrics. McCracken half expected Ingrid Bergman to come sauntering in at any moment.
He took a seat at the bar and continued to gaze around him. The backmost room lay beneath a balcony accessible by a small flight of steps which undoubtedly led to what had been Rick’s office in the film and what was Vasquez’s now. The only things missing were the gaming tables so crucial to the movie’s flavor. Gambling had been permitted by Captain Renaux, but obviously his real-life counterparts had more scruples.
Blaine ordered a club soda and sipped it while considering what his next step should be. The staircase held his best chance for reaching Vasquez, but how could he know the fat man was even here? His eyes fell upon it once again. How to get up the steps without being seen? McCracken knew a number of the patrons seated at the tables were actually the fat man’s soldiers. Vasquez left nothing to chance, and under the circumstances, he would be prepared for McCracken’s expected intrusion. Accordingly, Blaine kept his face turned toward the bar, concealing it as much as possible.
He turned again only when the impossible appeared in the mirror in the form of a woman being escorted across the floor toward the staircase by two beefy guards. It wasn’t Ingrid Bergman.
It was Natalya!
Of all the gin joints in all the towns in all the world, she had to walk into this one … .
McCracken’s feelings were mixed. He was overjoyed to see Natalya. Clearly, though, she was here as a prisoner, and that was a dangerous situation for both of them.
A change of strategy was called for, and to pursue it Blaine headed for the door.
Two hours had passed with Natalya’s handcuffed form seated before the huge desk of the equally huge Vasquez.
“He won’t come,” she told him again. “He’ll know it’s a trap.”
“Ah, dear lady,” began the fat man, patting his cheeks with a handkerchief that was already grimy with sweat, “my sources place him in Casablanca, and he will come because I represent the end of the trail he’s been following.”
“The crystals …”
“Remarkable, aren’t they?”
“You don’t know—”
“I know when McCracken arrives I will have you to use against him to provide me the advantage I need.” He sighed mightily, his bulbous stomach stirring beneath his suit jacket. The fat man’s receding hairline made even more prominent the excess flesh which seemed to stretch out his jowls. He breathed noisily. “I’m starting to feel, though, that this is not the best of places to bait a trap for my old friend McCrackenballs.” He nodded to the four guards gathered around her. “I will have these men escort you to another of my establishments, eminently less cultured than this but better for our purposes.” He nodded to himself. “We’ll wait a few more hours. After that, I promise you a quick death since I remain a gentleman.”
The guards led her from the room and Vasquez followed them down the hallway to the top of the landing that overlooked the back section of the Cafe American. Natalya knew her move would have to come quick, but she also knew that Vasquez’s guards would be scattered among the cafe’s customers. And who knew how many there might be in addition to the four she could identify?
They started to lead her down the steps, handcuffs carefully concealed, and Natalya was ready to feign a trip and take her chances with one of the guards’ purloined guns, when a sound very much like thunder shook the smooth walls of the Cafe American. The chandeliers trembled and patrons grasped hold of glasses atop their tables to prevent them from toppling.
A pair of door guards had just reached the main entrance when the double doors crashed open in one savage thrust to allow a troop of Berber horsemen to charge through. They negotiated the various alcoves quickly, passing under the arches into the back section in just seconds. And Natalya caught a good look at the man garbed in robes at their lead, horse braying, rifle in hand.
The only Berber sporting a beard.
McCracken had gone straight up to the horseman he had identified as the Berber leader and uttered the three words taught him long ago when he had done a favor for the Berbers, a people he had always respected. The man looked down at him in shock. The words formed a bond, a pact, signifying a debt owed to any man who spoke them, words never passed to any but the bearer. Honor for the Berbers rose above all else.
The Berber leader climbed down from his horse, walked with McCracken off to the side of the road, and asked him there what his bidding might be.
Blaine told him.
Natalya threw herself into motion as soon as her eyes locked with Blaine’s. She tore free of the guards’ grasp when the commotion distracted them and hurled herself down the steps, just as the Berbers, expert marksmen without peer, began firing away with both hands clutching their rifles. They bellowed above the blasts, playing out the fantasia ritual for real.
McCracken leaped from his horse and used it for cover as he made for Natalya. He shielded her with his body and fired his rifle toward the soldiers left standing near the steps. More of Vasquez’s guards appeared about them, from behind every alcove and wall it seemed, but the Berbers were more than equal to the task. Incredible as it may have seemed, several of the fifteen horsemen who had rushed into the Cafe American handled single-shot rifles which had to be reloaded after each pull of the trigger even as they continued in motion on horseback in the narrow confines. Tables toppled over and crashed to the floor. Glass shattered. Through all the chaos, the cafe’s patrons did their best to make for the door or find areas of cover. The chaos allowed some of Vasquez’s men to make good on their targets, but most of these shots required exposing their positions, and inevitably there were Berbers ready to fire at them.
Blaine threw off his robes and led the handcuffed Natalya across the floor, dodging behind a series of horses en route to the exit. The Berbers realized his plan when he was almost to the first archway and pulled their horses into a new formation. A few of the animals rose on their hind legs and kicked at the air, their heads just missing the ceding.
On the main floor, Sam’s counterpart was long gone but the melody of “As Time Goes By” continued, revealing a player piano.
Blaine reached the second archway and hoisted Natalya atop a white Berber horse behind one of the group’s leaders. The horse was off instantly, knocking over a pair of tables and lunging through the ruined entrance doors. McCracken pulled himself on board while the animal was running, still searching for purchase while the horseman urged the animal on, holding on to Natalya for dear life when they leaped onto the street.
But a bullet found their horseman. He was hurled off and the animal rose in fright, tossing Blaine and Natalya to the street as well. At first McCracken thought the bullet was a stray but more shots started up immediately from positions of cover across the street. Damn, Vasquez must have had men already in position, leaving nothing to chance.
Blaine shielded Natalya on the street, bullets flying everywhere as the festival erupted in chaos. Participants in elaborate sets and displays, many costumed, all fled. Tables full of souvenirs and foods were upturned, contents dumped to the ground. Amidst it all the Berbers continued to rise tall on horseback, negotiating through the crowd while firing as best they could at the gunmen across the street.
Blaine realized that with more of Vasquez’s men starting to emerge from the Cafe American, the Berbers were about to be caught in a crossfire. Their only option was to regroup and rush en masse across the street to tum the tide of the battle. The Berbers’ incredible organization amazed McC
racken. The best shooters among them continued to return enemy fire while the rest made it across the street as best they could, discarding their rifles and drawing long, curved swords instead.
As the first of Vasquez’s men appeared from within the cafe, Blaine and Natalya lunged back to their feet, each grasping a rifle belonging to a felled Berber, M-l carbines dating back forty years at least, and took cover behind a toppled fruit stand in order to buy the Berbers the time they needed across the street. The old-fashioned bolt-assembly rifles required that they make each bullet count, which they did at the outset by dropping the first four of Vasquez’s men to emerge from the door.
“Like to get back in there and find the fat man himself,” Blaine yelled to Natalya between rounds. “He’s the only one who knows for sure where the crystals are.”
Natalya was aiming again, with great difficulty, since handcuffs still bound her wrists. Vasquez’s men had stopped emerging but plenty had taken cover behind the iron cocktail tables outside the front of the cafe.
Across the street, the Berbers had used their razor-sharp swords on the supports holding up the awnings over the shops where Vasquez’s gunmen were stationed. The strategy forced the enemy to show themselves, and the battle turned hand-to-hand where the Berbers’ swords were infinitely superior to automatic rifles. Their horses charged through debris as the riders’ blades whistled in deadly arcs that sent ribbons of blood through the air.
Blaine pulled the trigger on an empty chamber. Natalya was already starting to scurry for a replacement rifle ten yards away in the open. Blaine reached to the side and grabbed her, something else in mind. The chaos had spread through the festival well beyond the scene of the battle, and people rushed in panic everywhere, an occasional horse-drawn float or moving market cart charging wildly by.
It was one of these, pulled by a team of horses and packed with breads, that Blaine focused on. He called to Natalya and, with bullets tracing them, they leaped for it as it passed. Blaine’s purchase was better than Natalya’s and he crawled for the reins. She, slowed again by her handcuffs, barely pulled herself onto a stack of bread loaves.
McCracken saw the reins fluttering near the ground and found he could reach them only by lying prone and lowering his arms and upper body between the hurtling beasts.
“Grab my legs!” he screamed back to Natalya.
She did as best she could and he lowered himself between the charging hindquarters of the horses. The reins were a blur beneath him but he managed to grab hold and precariously right himself in the same motion. He was still lying flat on his stomach, though, and from this position he attempted to gain control as the cart continued to rush madly.
“Hahhhhhhhh!” he screamed at the horses, tugging at the leather reins. “Hahhhhhhhhh!”
But the horses kept thundering on, heedless of his commands. John Wayne himself would surely have been at a loss by this point. All Blaine could do was keep pulling on the reins, until the horses slowed and finally came to a halt directly before the Sijilmassa, one of Casablanca’s most elegant restaurants.
“Table for two please,” Blaine said to the dumbstruck doorman.
Chapter 26
BLAINE PICKED THE LOCK on Natalya’s handcuffs in the basement of a smaller restaurant further down the street.
“Mind telling me where those Berber horsemen came from?” she asked him.
“I did a favor for them years ago when a radical group was infringing on their cherished privacy. When I saw you rudely escorted through Vasquez’s establishment, I figured the time had come to call in my marker.”
“And they remembered? They were the same ones you helped?”
“A few were. And Berbers never forget. As a matter of fact, the ones who volunteered were happy to be of assistance. They’ve been warriors for generations. This kind of stuff is in their blood.”
“They spilled plenty back there.”
“But ours was left intact.” Blaine licked at one of his fingers. “Unless you count getting bit by a horse.”
“My government is to blame for much of this,” Natalya told him. “I managed to escape Raskowski and telegraph Chernopolov again but apparently I am no longer wanted.”
“Escape Raskowski? Would you mind telling me what’s happened since I saw you last?”
“It’s a long story and not a very pleasant one,” she began, and by the time she reached the climax Blaine was completely stunned.
“Just seconds before the Red Tide exploded,” Natalya explained, “I dropped into the water through a porthole. I still have a ringing in my ear but the water cushioned me from the blast. I stayed under as long as I could and swam away. When I finally came up, I had to rest. I needed help and decided to call in an old favor to get it.” She paused. “It was Vasquez’s men who showed up.”
“Fat man’s got them everywhere. Must have put the word out on you after he found out you were palling around with me. Vasquez likes to think ahead. Figured you’d come in handy and he was almost right. Okay,” he continued, “let’s take it by the numbers. Raskowski wipes out Hope Valley to illustrate the existence and potency of this Alpha weapon he devised and has managed to deploy within a satellite.”
“Only something went wrong and the satellite self-destructed.”
“So he has to get another beam weapon deployed fast, and with no chance of arranging another launch on his own, he deceives the U.S. government into launching his death ray for him.”
Natalya nodded. “The general is undeniably a genius. Coming up with this contingency plan so quickly proves that but there’s even more. All the manipulations of our two governments were his work as well.”
Blaine nodded. “He had to control and use differing degrees of trust. All his machinations depended on that.”
“And he’s got both our nations perceiving what he wants.”
“There’s one man left I trust in my government,” Blaine told her, “who could blow the lid off this whole thing. Trouble is they’ve cut me off from him. Might just have a friend, though, who can cut me back in.”
They checked into the El Mansour Hotel as a married couple. Blaine chose it because it offered long-distance service from each room.
The contact procedure he had initiated with Wareagle would necessitate the big Indian’s waiting by the same phone in Maine for thirty-minute periods five times a day. The next began in a half hour and it took almost that long for the operator to find an open line over which to place the call. Blaine held his breath as it went through, one ring sounding, then a second.
“Hello, Blainey,” Wareagle greeted.
“You’re in Maine!” Blaine wailed happily. “Goddamnit, you got the message!”
“The spirits warned of another disturbance and told me in my sleep you would be sending word.”
“What about the convention?”
“I stayed long enough to learn that a man’s manitou is as much forged by the impressions of others as his own. We cannot change what we are because others will not let us.”
“It’s bad this time, Indian.”
“When was it not? Our existence has always been scorched by the flames of others’ greed and lust. We escaped the hell-fire only to learn that it wasn’t a place, it was a condition.”
“You avoided it. For years.”
“A temporary reprieve in which the spirits revealed to me my true shape. We get what we want, as well as what we need.”
“The world doesn’t need what’s about to happen to it, Indian. I’d love to deliver that message myself but I’ve got sort of a problem over here. You up to traveling?”
“The travels of the spirit are endless.”
“What I need is for your spirit to lead you onto a plane bound for Washington. Your destination is Virginia, the Toy Factory.”
“I know it, Blainey.”
“The director’s name is Sundowner, and if he’s still alive you’ve got to reach him. Tell him Washington’s been duped, that this whole shitty business isn’t
over yet, not by a longshot. Get him to call me at this number. I’ll be waiting.”
“A direct line, Blainey?”
“It’ll be the last thing the bastards are looking for. Besides, I haven’t got much of a choice. This is the only way. But speaking of ways, finding one into the Toy Factory isn’t going to be easy.”
“The spirits say that the invisible man is he whom no one bothers to see.”
“I could use a dose of that magic myself, Johnny.”
“Your manitou is restless.”
“It will continue to be as long as I’m on the trail of the only substance that might be able to save the world. The spirits ever mention anything about the continent of Atlantis, Indian?”
“Only through my ancestors, Blainey. They spoke of a paradise and an awesome power which eventually destroyed it.”
“It figures.”
“How can we go somewhere that doesn’t exist?” Natalya asked when Blaine had finished the tale of where he was headed next.
“It’s not that the island doesn’t exist; it’s just that we don’t know exactly where to find it.”
“Sounds like the same thing.”
“Not at all.”
“Even so, I don’t see how its existence could have remained secret for so long.”
“Not secret, just that you won’t find it on any of the tourist maps. It’s somewhere in the Biminis, though, and the real fun starts once we reach it.”
“How so?”
“Based on what Clive said, we’ve got to figure that the Atragon reserves lie somewhere offshore of the island, within some underwater formation.”
“Atlantis?” Natalya posed hesitantly.
“Not you, too. Please.”
She regarded him closely. “Your strength comes from being able to remain detached. It’s how you have stayed in the game so long.”
“You’ve been doing pretty well yourself. A boat explosion and Vasquez in the same week. You get high marks for survival.”