The Moroccan Girl

by Charles Cumming

  “Why do you think that is?” he asked.

  “Control,” Yassine replied. “Leadership.” Carradine looked quickly to the woman at the next table. A man had joined her. His hand was lingering on the small of her back. “We have undertaken measures to ensure that jihadism is cut off at the roots before it has a chance to flower. Such groups are well infiltrated and—as you will know from your work in London—we share a great deal of sensitive material with our friends in Europe, and beyond.” Carradine began to understand why Yassine had been of interest to Mantis. He seemed to be well connected in political and intelligence circles. “Our ruling family has strategically placed individuals from the major towns and cities in positions of authority and influence so that each region feels fairly represented. Furthermore, we have ensured that our young men and women are educated in the correct way.…”

  In other circumstances, Carradine would have continued to listen without distraction, but he had heard the sound of laughter emanating from the staircase. As he sat facing Yassine, Carradine looked over the Moroccan’s shoulder and saw two young women—one wearing a designer T-shirt and tight denim jeans, the other a long pink jilaba—climbing the staircase to the first floor. A few steps behind them came a man speaking noisily in a Hispanic accent, his long hair tied in a top-knot. The Spaniard’s booming laughter was loud enough to be heard above the music playing in the lounge.

  It was Ramón.

  12

  Carradine kept his head down. He knew that Ramón’s presence in the restaurant was not a coincidence and cursed himself for recommending Blaine’s in the taxi. The Spaniard sounded drunk and fired up, speaking in loud, slurred French as he stood by the bar with the women. Both were attractive and smartly dressed and looked as though they were accompanying him for reasons other than his charming personality. With any luck the manager would show them to a table on the opposite side of the lounge and Carradine would not have to speak to them. He did not want to have to go through the artifice of introducing Yassine.

  “Do you recognize somebody?”

  “No, no.” Carradine had not realized that his reaction had been so noticeable. “I thought I saw someone I knew. False alarm.”

  “Holy shit! Kit, man! What the fuck are you doing here?”

  The timing could not have been worse. Ramón was shouting across the lounge. Carradine looked apologetically at Yassine, half-stood up out of his seat and faced the bar.

  “Great to see you, man!” Ramón was bellowing over the music and waving his hand. Carradine excused himself from the table. Weaving past a waiter ferrying a hookah pipe across the lounge, he reached Ramón and shook his hand. He was immediately clutched in a bear hug so tight that it transferred the sweat on the Spaniard’s clothes onto Carradine’s shoulders and neck.

  “I thought I’d find you here, man! How are you doin’?”

  “I’m just having a quiet dinner with a friend.”

  “Right!” Ramón put his hands around the waists of the two women. He looked like a Formula One impresario posing for a picture in the paddock. “You wanna join us?”

  Carradine could smell the fumes of several hours of drinking. He was aware of the women staring at him, sizing him up as a potential catch.

  “No. No thanks. You’re kind to ask.” He played the caricature of a staid, disapproving Englishman. “We’re just doing a business thing. I had a big night last night and…”

  “A business thing?” Ramón pronounced “business” like “beezness.” “I thought you were a novelist, man?” The Spaniard glanced down at the chunky wristwatch nestled in the forest of hair on his forearms. “How come you doing business in Casablanca eleven o’clock at night?”

  Carradine was not given the opportunity to formulate an answer.

  “Hey girls,” Ramón continued. “This guy, he’s famous writer. In England. Kit Carradine. C.K. right? Not J. K. Rowling. C. K. Carradine. You know him?”

  Both women smiled in a polite but obvious demonstration of their ignorance of the Carradine oeuvre. Carradine smiled back. One of them—the girl in the pink jilaba—was extraordinarily beautiful.

  “So look,” he said. “I’ve got to get back to my friend. Maybe I’ll come and join you once he’s gone?”

  The offer seemed to satisfy all parties.

  “OK good, fine.” Ramón slapped Carradine on the back, as if attempting to dislodge any stray chunk of food that might have become lodged in his windpipe. “We’ll be right over here.” He pointed at a table close to the bar. The woman in the pink jilaba jolted Carradine with a bedroom gaze and walked toward her seat. “Come say hello.”

  Carradine turned around and indicated to Yassine that he was going to use the bathroom. As he did so, the woman with long black hair whom he had earlier mistaken for Lara Bartok walked straight past him. She sat in the seat behind Yassine that had previously been occupied by the young Arab smoking sheeshah. Carradine went into the gents, tipped the maid twenty dirhams on the way out and took a stick of Juicy Fruit from a metal plate by the door. When he came back into the lounge, a man in a checked shirt was moving between the tables crooning an Arabic version of “Careless Whisper.” Carradine could hear the boom of Ramón’s laughter above the amplified sound of the music. He walked toward the table and saw that Yassine was checking his mobile phone.

  To his consternation, there was a photograph of Bartok on the screen. Carradine was certain that it was one of the pictures Mantis had shown him in London, but Yassine swiped it away before he was able to take a closer look. The sighting troubled Carradine to such an extent that he did not speak for the first few moments after sitting down. Yassine placed the phone on the table.

  “I think I will also go to the bathroom,” he said.

  As the Moroccan stood up, Carradine noticed him staring at the woman with the long, black hair. His interest in her was so obvious that she returned his gaze. Had Yassine also mistaken her for “Maria Rodriguez”? The likelihood of such a coincidence seemed remote—unless several Service operatives in the region had all been tasked with finding her? Carradine recalled Mantis’s remark at Lisson Grove: there were “other officers and support agents” looking for Bartok. Yassine could be one of them.

  The Moroccan walked toward the bar. He did not take his phone. Had he deliberately left it on the table as a trap? There was no way of knowing.

  Carradine realized that he must act quickly. Touching the screen to keep it alive, he leaned forward. In the same movement he picked up the bottle on the table and poured himself a glass of water. He was aware that Yassine was moving in his peripheral vision, passing in front of the bar. He did not want him to see what he was about to do.

  As soon as the Moroccan was out of sight, Carradine picked up the phone. He clicked the button at the base of the handset, taking the display to a home screen populated by icons bearing Arabic script. Carradine’s hand was shaking very slightly as he studied the screen. He was frustrated by his inability to control his nerves. He tried to remember the logo for “Photos,” mistakenly opening Facebook Messenger, Instagram and Safari before tapping the technicolor flower that at last took him to the Camera Roll.

  He looked up in the direction of the bathroom. No sign of Yassine. He prayed that there was a queue for the gents, that the Moroccan would bump into a friend or be delayed by a woman trying to pick him up. He looked down at the phone.

  The screen displayed a patchwork of photos of Lara Bartok, identical to the ones Mantis had shown him in Lisson Grove. Carradine could see the same picture that he was carrying in his wallet, the one used in the Rodriguez passport. He clicked on the photo of Bartok standing next to the bearded man with a surfboard—then closed the Camera Roll, tapped back to the home screen and locked the phone.

  His body was flushed with sweat. He looked up to see Yassine coming back from the bathroom. As the Moroccan passed behind a pillar, Carradine placed the phone back in its earlier position on the table and took a sip of water. His hands were shaking uncont
rollably. He decided to sit on them, taking a series of deep breaths, elated that he had successfully managed to access the phone without being caught, but surprised by his inability to conceal his anxiety.

  “Your friend is having himself a good time,” said Yassine as he sat down. He had applied cologne in the bathroom. The smell reminded Carradine of the arrivals hall in Casablanca airport. “Where is he from?”

  “Spain,” he replied, rocking forward on his hands. “Or America. I couldn’t really work it out.”

  “And the girls?”

  “Maybe they’re his sisters?”

  Carradine had intended the remark as a joke but Yassine took it at face value, indicating with a patronizing frown that he thought Carradine was being naïve.

  “How do you know him, please?”

  Carradine explained that he had met Ramón on the plane and had shared a taxi with him from the airport.

  “Do you also know the man who is sitting with him?”

  Carradine was caught off guard. He had not noticed that a fourth person had joined their table.

  “I didn’t see anybody else,” he said. “Who’s there?”

  “Somebody I have recognized. Somebody I do not like.”

  Carradine peered across the lounge, trying to locate Ramón’s table. He could see only the beautiful woman in the pink jilaba and the side of Ramón’s head.

  “You recognized him?”

  Yassine lit a cigarette.

  “He is known to me, yes. To the government. He claims to be an American diplomat.”

  Carradine understood the euphemism and felt the strange sensation of slipping and losing his balance.

  “He’s Agency?”

  Yassine nodded. All of Carradine’s doubts about Ramón crystalized in that moment. He lit a cigarette of his own to hide his disquiet.

  “And my Spanish friend? The hairy one. Have you seen him before?”

  “Never,” Yassine replied. “Believe me. I would remember a man like this.”

  So who was he? And why was he meeting an Agency officer in Casablanca? Carradine was now certain that he was being followed.

  “You look worried.”

  He tried to set his concerns aside with a gulp of beer.

  “I’m fine,” he said. “Totally fine.” Needing an excuse for the change in his mood, Carradine plucked a lie out of thin air. “To be honest, that headache just came back. I should take another pill.”

  “I am sorry to hear this.” Yassine immediately gestured for the bill. It was as though he had been waiting for an excuse to end their meeting. “Why don’t we call it a night? Perhaps you should go back to your hotel and rest?”

  Carradine heard the bulldog roar of Ramón’s laughter burst across the lounge. He thought of all the fictional Agency officers he had written about in his books—the patriots, the traitors, the murderers, the saints—and realized that, for the first time, he was a handshake away from being introduced to the real thing.

  The manager brought the bill. Carradine understood that it was the responsibility of the Service to pay for dinner. Yassine did not disagree. He paid in cash, left a generous tip, and kept the receipt for Mantis.

  “Before we leave,” said Yassine. “I have something for you.”

  The Moroccan had put on his jacket. He reached into a side pocket and retrieved a small, rectangular object that he passed to Carradine as he shook his hand. Carradine took whatever it was that Yassine was giving him without breaking eye contact, placing it in his back pocket.

  “This is for our mutual friend?” he asked. The heat and sweat of his earlier disquiet had suddenly returned like a fever. Mantis had said nothing about Yassine giving him something to bring back to London.

  “For our friend, yes.”

  Carradine probed the object between his fingers. He was certain that it was a memory stick of some kind. At the same time Yassine picked up the novel. Only then did he look at it more carefully and see the name C. K. Carradine printed on the cover.

  “Wait,” he said. “This is your book?”

  “One of mine,” Carradine replied.

  Yassine walked toward the bar, shaking his head.

  “You must forgive me,” he said. “I did not realize.”

  “That’s quite all right.”

  “Have you signed it?”

  Carradine wondered why Yassine was concerned to have a signed copy of a novel intended only as a book cipher. As he returned the lighter to the manager, he asked if he could borrow a pen. Within earshot of the conversation at Ramón’s table, Carradine rested the book on the bar, opening it to the title page.

  “Who should I make it out to?” he asked.

  “Just your signature, please.”

  Carradine signed his name and handed the book to Yassine. Anybody within a few meters of the bar would have been able to see the exchange take place.

  “Well, it was very good to meet you, Kit,” he said. They shook hands, Yassine making it plain as they did so that he did not want them to leave the restaurant at the same time.

  “You, too,” Carradine replied.

  Yassine suddenly moved a step closer.

  “This individual,” he whispered, nodding in the direction of Ramón’s table.

  “Which one?”

  “The one I spoke of,” he said. “The American.”

  “Go on.”

  “Be careful with him.” There was a foreboding in his eyes. “Be very, very careful.”

  13

  Carradine was acutely aware of his isolation. An overweight woman seated at a nearby table looked up and curled a smile. He took out a cigarette, turning toward the bar. He felt like a man standing on his own at a party with nobody to talk to. The singer was crooning the end of another love song, drawing out the final notes. All around him middle-aged men were striking deals with women half their age over glasses of cheap champagne and untouched plates of fruit. Sheeshah and cigarettes were being smoked in every corner of the lounge; Carradine watched as one of the waiters picked up the foil crown of a hookah pipe, turned it over and blew a small cloud of ash toward the ground. The private, disciplined side of his nature was in conflict with his hunger for intrigue. The sensible course of action would have been to slip quietly out of the restaurant and to take a taxi back to his hotel. But he wanted to know the truth about Ramón. Who was he and why was he following him? Carradine also wanted to get eyes on his American contact, to try to discern the nature of the relationship between the two men. He knew that he was potentially putting himself at risk by meeting someone suspected of working for the Agency, yet he was constitutionally incapable of walking away without at least finding out if Yassine’s warning had been justified.

  He walked toward Ramón’s table. The woman in the pink jilaba was speaking rapidly in French. Her friend laughed at something she had said and carefully attended to her mascara. Ramón was subdued, the ebullience and bonhomie sucked out of him. He looked up. Carradine saw the same cold, pitiless look in his eyes that he had witnessed in the cab. There would be no bear hug this time, no slap on the back.

  “I just wanted to say goodbye before I head off,” he said.

  The American turned. The two women were looking at Carradine with interest. They had their catches for the night, but the solitary English tourist might be worth keeping in reserve for future evenings.

  “How are you?” Ramón asked with indifference. He gestured across the table. “This is my new friend, Sebastian. Sebastian, meet Kit Carradine.”

  The American stood up. “Hey there. Sebastian Hulse. Good to meet you.”

  Hulse was a square-jawed forty-five with recently barbered brown hair and blue eyes. Boxing classes had given Carradine a habit of sizing people up in terms of their potential strength and physical fitness. Hulse’s bespoke linen suit looked East Coast Ivy League and there was something easeful and well rested about him. Nevertheless, he looked as though he could handle himself in a fight. Carradine wouldn’t have been surprised if he
had once been in the military.

  “You, too,” he said. “New friend?”

  “Yeah.” Was it Carradine’s imagination or did Ramón sound uncertain? “We just met tonight in my hotel. Had a couple of drinks, I told him you’d recommended this place.…”

  “Great bar,” Hulse added.

  The meeting sounded plausible enough, but Carradine was wary of what Yassine had said about the American. If Hulse was Agency, could he have engineered the meeting with Ramón in order to find out more about him? Given that they had met at the Sheraton, was it possible that he was “Abdullah Aziz”?

  “Look, I don’t want to interrupt,” he said. The remark was an expression both of Carradine’s innate politeness but also of his desire not to be drawn into whatever web Hulse might be weaving for him. “I can leave you in peace.”

  Ramón’s face suggested that he was hopeful that Carradine would indeed slip away. Hulse had other ideas.

  “No, please join us for a drink,” he said. “You don’t have a girl with you?” He glanced in the direction of the overweight woman who had earlier smiled at Carradine. “There’s one over there. I can’t tell if she’s built that way or six months pregnant.”

  Ramón grunted a halfhearted laugh. The two women seated at the table did not appear to have understood what Hulse had said. He introduced them.

  “This is Maryam. This is Salma. Girls, this is Mr. Carradine.”

  “Kit,” said Carradine, shaking Salma’s cool, manicured hand as she adjusted her jilaba. “And how do you know each other?”

  It was a naïve question for which he received a suitably blunt look from Hulse. Obviously the women had been plying their trade in the bar at the Sheraton.

  “We met earlier this evening,” he replied pointedly.

  “Yeah, that’s right,” added Ramón.

  There was a half-finished bottle of champagne in front of Salma and an empty chair positioned a couple of feet from where Carradine was standing. He did not feel that he could walk away without losing face.