The Moroccan Girl

by Charles Cumming

  An hour later, having walked in a wide circle which had brought him to a shuttered concrete shopping mall in Gueliz, Carradine stubbed out a final cigarette and began to look around for a taxi. He was due to appear at the festival in less than twelve hours’ time and had done nothing to prepare for his event. At no point had he seen anyone resembling Bartok, nor felt much confidence that he would do so the following day. This, after all, was a woman who had proved so adept at eluding capture that the Service had been forced to resort to the luck of amateurs such as himself and Mohammed Oubakir to try to find her.

  Speaking of the devil. Standing directly opposite him on the other side of the road was Oubakir. The man he had known as “Yassine” was looking at his phone while speaking to a middle-aged woman wearing a yellow veil and a pale blue kaftan. To judge by their body language, she was a close friend or relative; perhaps she was Oubakir’s wife. Carradine concealed himself behind an orange tree at the side of the street. A taxi pulled up alongside Oubakir’s companion. She opened the passenger door and stepped inside, leaving Oubakir alone. Carradine shouted across the road.

  “Yassine!”

  Oubakir looked up and squinted, as though he was having trouble bringing Carradine into focus. For a moment it looked as if Mantis’s agent was going to ignore him, but he eventually raised his hand in slow, bewildered acknowledgment and watched as Carradine crossed the road.

  “Mister Kit,” he said. “What are you doing here?”

  “I was going to ask you the same question. Let’s get a drink.”

  18

  They went to a café on the next corner. It was empty save for two old men playing dominoes at a table on the far side of the terrace. Carradine ordered a Coke, Oubakir a black coffee. He was wearing clothes almost identical to those he had sported in Blaine’s: dark cotton trousers and a striped shirt with a plain white collar. The lenses of his glasses were blurred with grease and dust. Oubakir wiped them on a paper napkin. He looked very tired.

  “You are here in Marrakech for the festival,” he said.

  Carradine took it as a statement rather than a question.

  “That’s right. And you? London didn’t say anything about you coming here.”

  Carradine had decided to play the role that Oubakir had assigned to him in Casablanca: that of the experienced writer spy sent by the Service to run “Yassine.”

  “They did not?” The Moroccan looked surprised. “Perhaps I should have mentioned it.”

  “That’s all right.”

  “You are also looking for the woman?”

  Carradine lit a cigarette. He had not expected Oubakir to be so explicit about the search for Bartok. Nevertheless he ran with the conceit, wondering if the Moroccan knew about Bartok’s links to Simakov and Resurrection.

  “We have people looking for her all over the place,” he said. “There’s a strong chance she may show her face at the literary festival. Have you had any luck?”

  Oubakir took a sip of the black coffee, losing his gaze in the cup.

  “None.”

  “Don’t worry about it. Me neither.”

  The Moroccan looked up and smiled gratefully, running a hand over the bald dome of his head.

  “You know about tomorrow?” he asked.

  Carradine played for time. “What part of it?”

  “The envelope. The package for the woman. You are to give it to me at the festival, yes?”

  It was confirmation that Carradine had been sacked. He felt a collapsing sense of annoyance and irritation. Why hadn’t Mantis told him personally that he wanted the passport and credit card handed over? He checked his phone. Sure enough there was a message waiting for him on WhatsApp.

  Yassine is going to come to your talk tomorrow. Can you give him the package I sent to you? Very important that you do so. Hope all is going well out there at the festival. Thanks again for all your help.

  Carradine lowered the phone. If he did as Mantis asked, and then happened to find Bartok, he would no longer have any way of assisting her. He had to continue to defy Service orders in order to do what he thought was right.

  “You look concerned,” said Oubakir.

  Carradine forced a smile. “I’m just tired,” he said.

  “You are tired!”

  Oubakir’s temper suddenly flared. He drained his coffee, setting the cup down angrily.

  “I am risking my life for you. My family. My job. I did not expect to do this sort of work when I agreed to help your country.”

  Carradine found himself in the unusual position of pretending to be a bona fide British intelligence officer trying to mollify a Service agent on behalf of a man who had just fired him for incompetence.

  “Yassine,” he said, wondering if he should have referred to Oubakir as “Mohammed.” “Please. We understand the risks you are taking. The Service is very grateful for the sacrifices you are making. Believe me, I know the strain you are under.”

  “Yet you are the one who complains of being tired.…”

  Carradine squeezed the Moroccan’s forearm in an effort to reassure him.

  “I’m sorry. It was ridiculous of me to talk about my own tiredness when you are the one under stress.” He was as bemused by his ability to act out the part of an agent runner as he was bewildered by Oubakir’s willingness to lap it up. “What can we do to help you? Do you want to go back to Rabat?”

  The Moroccan’s pride prevented him from yielding to Carradine’s suggestion. With a stiff shake of the head he folded his arms and looked out at the street.

  “I am fine,” he said. “I am just concerned about the American, that is all.”

  “You mean the man in Blaine’s?”

  “Yes, of course I mean the man in Blaine’s. I have seen him in Marrakech.”

  Carradine was again obliged to conceal his consternation.

  “You saw him today?”

  “Yes. Tonight, in the Medina. He was sitting in a café alone. What do you make of this?”

  Carradine did not know what to make of it. Sebastian Hulse could have a dozen different reasons for being in the city. Had he come to Marrakech specifically to follow him or did he have other plans? Carradine also wondered what had become of Ramón. Were they working together or had Hulse left him behind in Casablanca? He wished that he knew why Mantis had fired him. It would have been so much easier to confess to Oubakir that he was playing a role for which he was neither trained nor sanctioned, but his pride would not allow it.

  “Did he see you?”

  Oubakir leaned back in his seat, folded his arms and said: “Of course not. I was careful. I used my training.”

  “Good. I’m sure you did.” Carradine stubbed out the cigarette, wondering what to say next. He came up with: “Why did you warn me about him?”

  “That was in my report,” Oubakir looked affronted. “Two months ago.”

  “I don’t see all your reports.” The lie came to him as easily as switching on a light. “The product you send us is considered to be very sensitive. The circulation on the intelligence is limited to my superiors.”

  Carradine had rarely seen a man trying so hard to conceal his delight. Oubakir swayed to one side, fighting to suppress a smile, and turned to order a second cup of coffee.

  “Will you have something?” he beamed.

  “Not for me, thank you.”

  The owner of the café acknowledged the order and went into the kitchen. There was a moment of silence. Carradine could see that he was going to have to prompt him.

  “You were going to tell me about Sebastian Hulse.”

  “Oh yes.” Oubakir lowered his voice and leaned forward. There was no chance that they could be overheard—the two old men playing dominoes had left the now deserted café—but the Moroccan was plainly keen to sustain an atmosphere of the clandestine. “Hulse is under suspicion. We think he has made links with the Russian program.”

  Carradine immediately thought of Karel’s claim that the Russian government was actively k
illing the friends and relatives of known Resurrection activists. Did Hulse’s presence in Morocco verify Agency collaboration with Moscow’s plan?

  “I see,” he said. He was trying to think of a way of putting questions to Oubakir that would not reveal his ignorance. “The Russian program is something the Service is keeping under wraps. What does your side know about it?”

  “Only what the British have told us at a government level. That Moscow is carrying out state-sponsored assassinations. And that Miss Bartok is a target because of her relationship with the late Ivan Simakov.”

  So Karel wasn’t just a jumped-up fantasist peddling conspiracy theories to strangers on a train. The threat against Bartok was real.

  “And you think Ramón and Hulse are involved with them?”

  For the first time Oubakir looked at Carradine with a degree of suspicion.

  “That is not for me to say,” he replied. Carradine could sense his reluctance to continue with the conversation. Partly out of irritation, partly out of a desire to push Oubakir into further indiscretions, he took a risk.

  “It’s something that London is worried about.” He lit another cigarette, trying to look nonchalant. “We’ve known about the Russian policy for some time. We’ve been trying to find out what’s going on from the American side.”

  Oubakir shrugged. He would not be persuaded to talk in more detail about what he knew: perhaps he had concluded that Carradine was too far down the pecking order to be trusted with such sensitive information.

  “Well, no doubt we shall see,” he said.

  Carradine indicated that the owner was coming back with the second cup of coffee. With the obvious purpose of changing the subject, Oubakir embarked on a discussion about tourism in Marrakech. Less than five minutes later he had finished the coffee and proposed that they go their separate ways.

  “Why don’t you meet me at my riad tomorrow afternoon?” Carradine suggested. “Is five o’clock OK? I can give you the package.”

  “That would be great.”

  They swapped numbers. Carradine gave Oubakir the address of the riad, realizing that he would have only a few hours the following day in which to try to find Bartok. That idea now seemed increasingly pointless: he would need to spend the morning preparing for his panel. They hailed separate cabs, Carradine reaching the riad a short time later and banging repeatedly on the wooden door before it was opened by a sleepy night manager in a stained shirt. He was asked to show some identification before being allowed inside.

  “I am sorry, sir,” the night manager explained, once it had been established that Carradine was a guest. “We have many people trying to come into the hotel. It is my job to keep you safe. To preserve your privacy.”

  It was only when Carradine was back in his room, swallowing a sleeping pill and setting his alarm to wake him in less than five hours’ time, that he began to question whether he should blow the whistle on what he had discovered. A secret Russian plan to kill the innocent friends and family members of known Resurrection activists, a plan with possible American involvement, was a scandal. He had signed the Official Secrets Act—yes—but what was to prevent him contacting one of his old colleagues from the BBC and leaking the story? Something had to be done, not only to protect Bartok but also to expose whoever was behind the alleged plot. Yet Carradine had no evidence to support Karel’s theory, nor any way of finding out if Oubakir had been telling him the truth.

  What he needed was proof.

  19

  The chambermaid’s name was Fatima. She had been working at the Sheraton for four years, starting in the laundry, graduating to rooms when one of the girls got married and moved to Fez. Fatima was thirty-one. She had two children—a boy of six and a girl of four—with her husband, Nourdin, who was a builder.

  Every now and again she would come into conflict with a guest. Usually it was with men, very occasionally with the foreign women who stayed in the hotel. They would shout at her, they would curse, barking orders to change the towels or find softer sheets or make sure they were not overcharged for the minibar. Often Fatima would walk in and find guests asleep or wandering naked around the room. On a few occasions, she had opened the door and heard couples having intercourse in bed. All of this was a normal part of her job. She liked the Americans best because they made sure to leave her money when they left. One man, from San Francisco, told her that tipping was like the time zones on a map: the farther east you went—“chasing sunsets” he called it—the less generous people became.

  Only on two occasions had she experienced serious trouble with a guest. Very soon after she first started cleaning the rooms on the upper floors of the hotel, she had encountered a man who was drunk and became very aggressive toward her, closing the door of the room and pushing her up against the wall. Fatima had managed to escape and the guest had subsequently been questioned by the police. She later discovered that he had been mixing prescribed medications with alcohol and that a French diplomat had been summoned from Rabat to represent the guest’s interests with the police and with the hotel management.

  Never before had any kind of financial offer been made to her. The Spanish man who propositioned her on Tuesday evening was disgusting—his clothes dirty, his skin covered in tattoos and thick black hairs. He offered her two hundred euros to stay in the room with him, waving the money in his hand back and forth with a revolting smile on his face, as though he believed that everything could be bought in Morocco, that he could own any woman. Fatima had never been told that she was beautiful; she did not think of herself as attractive, as the sort of person in whom a guest would be interested for sex. The Spanish guest—she discovered that his name was Ramón Basora—had not seemed drunk or high on drugs. He was instead most probably one of those men who needed a woman all the time, in the same way that some people could not help themselves eating too much or drinking excessive quantities of alcohol. The Spaniard was greedy and vain and arrogant. She had told him no and had left the room immediately.

  All the girls knew the story about the French politician and the chambermaid in New York. They had received advice and training from the management in how to deal with sexual aggression from guests of this kind. Even so, Fatima had been so shocked by the offer, so appalled and upset by what the man had proposed, that she had not reported it. She had said nothing to the other girls, nothing to her mother, not a word to Nourdin. She was worried that the Spaniard might be an important man and that she could lose her job. She had felt ashamed and wanted to forget all about what had happened.

  She had not seen Mr. Basora since he had waved her out of the room on Tuesday saying: “Fine, no problem, I’ll just find somebody prettier.” She had not worked the next day and had hoped that he would have checked out by the time she returned to the Sheraton at dawn on Thursday. This was not the case. She checked the list and saw that he was still registered at the hotel, in the same room on the sixth floor. Passing the room at eight o’clock she saw a DO NOT DISTURB sign hanging on the handle. It was still there three hours later and had not been moved by midday, when she was due to go off shift. She assumed that he had left the hotel to attend whatever meetings had brought him to Casablanca and knocked gently on the door.

  There was no answer. Fatima used her passcard and slowly opened the door, whispering “Hello, sir, hello” as she walked inside.

  The stench of vomit was so overpowering that she gagged and went out into the corridor to take a towel from the trolley with which to cover her face. Fatima then returned to the room.

  A man was lying naked on his back, close to the bed, his eyes open, his mouth hanging slack to one side and filled with what seemed to be a dried white paste, like milk which had been left out too long in the sun. She could see a torn condom wrapper on the carpet beside him. Fatima retched, running out of the room into the corridor. She knew that she was not supposed to alarm the guests—she had been trained to be modest in her appearance and behavior—but she screamed as she ran toward a family at the fa
r end of the corridor. There was a man with them. She grabbed him by the arm, imploring him to find a doctor.

  “There is a man,” she said, pointing in the direction of Basora’s room. “A guest. Please help him. He is Spanish. Something has happened to him. Something terrible.”

  20

  Carradine took breakfast beneath the orange trees, eating scrambled eggs on toast while watching a celebrity chef doing freestyle laps and tumble turns in the swimming pool. The famous American author and the equally celebrated Irish novelist were seated opposite each other at separate tables, the former eating muesli and yogurt, the latter attempting what appeared to be a Sudoku puzzle on his iPad. Neither man acknowledged Carradine.

  He went back to his room to prepare for the festival. He learned what he could about Katherine Paget—speed-reading her Amazon reviews, memorizing salient points from her Wikipedia page, watching an interview she had given on Newsnight—but felt suspended between two worlds. The first—that of his profession, of his peers—now seemed to him a place of fantasy and escapism which he found faintly preposterous; the second was a real world consisting of tangible threats far removed from the stories C. K. Carradine had woven in the pages of his thrillers. Yet he could no more afford to cancel his appearance at the festival than he could pretend to be a significant actor in the hunt for Lara Bartok. Carradine made his living from writing fiction; men like Sebastian Hulse and Mohammed Oubakir were men of action. He was a writer, not a spy. To think that he could intercede in the Russian plan to assassinate Bartok was foolish, perhaps even delusional.

  The festival was taking place at a five-star hotel in Gueliz. The lobby smelled of cedar wood and oil money. Arab teenagers in Yankees baseball caps were slumped on sofas decorating selfies to send on Snapchat. Carradine followed signs to the conference area. A green room had been set up for the guest speakers. Carradine registered with the organizers and introduced himself to a group of sponsors from London, one of whom had read all of his novels and enthusiastically fetched him a plate of biscuits and a cup of coffee before asking him to sign a first edition of Equal and Opposite. At around midday Katherine Paget swept into the green room with an entourage consisting of her husband, her publicist, her literary agent and her American editor, all of whom looked exhausted by the heat of Marrakech and the strain of attending to the Great Author’s every caprice. It was like witnessing the arrival of a head of state. Her eyes peering over coral-colored half-moon spectacles, Paget introduced herself to Carradine as “Kathy” and asked immediately if he had read her latest book.