The Moroccan Girl

by Charles Cumming

  He was certain that Hulse had come for a different purpose. Perhaps Bartok was already under surveillance and had been observed entering the riad. He wondered if Hulse would try to book a room in order to gain access to the building. He had heard that the riad was full for the festival and prayed that this was still the case.

  “Would you mind?” The American held up the book, producing a pen from the hip pocket of his trousers.

  “Delighted. Who should I make it out to?”

  “How about my wife?” Carradine thought of Salma and Maryam, of Hulse’s hand on Salma’s thigh.

  “Sure. I hope she likes it. What’s her name?”

  “Lara.”

  Carradine had already written “To” at the top of the page. The pen stopped in his hand, a tiny circle of ink forming on the paper as he registered what Hulse had said.

  “Lara? That’s your wife’s name?”

  “Last time I checked. You look surprised, Kit.”

  “No, no. It’s funny. I have a friend called Lara. Dating a pal of mine. In London. I was just thinking about them actually.”

  It struck Carradine how easily and seamlessly he was able to conjure the lie. Years of thinking about deception and subterfuge for his fiction had given him a kind of ghastly expertise. He completed the inscription, handing the book back to Hulse. The American looked at him with the same seemingly benign, yet sinister half smile he had adopted during the festival. It was a look that told Carradine he was not trusted; a look that promised payback should Hulse discover that he was being deceived.

  “Well, thank you for coming,” Carradine told him. He tried to appear slightly unsteady on his feet and winced in apparent discomfort. “I’m sorry not to invite you inside for a cup of tea but I really need to rest.”

  “Sure.”

  Hulse shook his hand again, moving back toward the door. Carradine was almost in the clear, but at the last moment the American hesitated and turned around.

  “You seen Mohammed Oubakir at all?”

  He knew it was a test. The Agency probably had Oubakir under surveillance. The two of them had been seen talking in the café the night before. It would be pointless to lie.

  “Yeah, as a matter of fact I ran into him last night. We had a coffee up in Gueliz.”

  Hulse seemed surprised that Carradine had admitted the truth.

  “Really?”

  “Yeah. Why?”

  “No reason. I thought I saw him at the festival, at your talk. I wasn’t entirely sure.” Hulse looked down at the floor, as though lost in thought. He was about to pull open the street door when he said: “Remind me how you know him again?”

  Carradine decided that enough was enough. He had to push back.

  “You ask a lot of questions, Sebastian.” A car blasted its horn outside. “Did you come here to get me to sign a book for your wife or is there something else on your mind?”

  “Forget it,” Hulse replied quickly. He stared hard into Carradine’s eyes, holding the gaze.

  “It’s just that you’ve behaved pretty strangely around me.…”

  “Is that so?”

  “Yeah, that’s so. I didn’t particularly enjoy our meeting in Blaine’s.” Hulse looked genuinely offended. The ruse was working. “Then you show up at my event and kind of stare at me like you’re trying to put me off.…”

  “Kit, I can assure you—”

  Carradine plowed on.

  “Let me finish. I didn’t invite you here. I don’t know how you found out where I was staying. The thing is, it’s awkward for me. I don’t feel comfortable around you. You keep asking about Mohammed Oubakir. I don’t know why. I don’t really know very much about him. There’s somebody who helps me with my books in London. An intelligence officer. A spy. She was the one who gave me Mohammed’s number. That’s why I was meeting him in Casablanca. I’m not really supposed to talk about it but you keep pressing me. I don’t know who you are or who you work for.”

  To Carradine’s delight, Hulse took a step forward and touched him on the shoulder.

  “Look,” he said. “I’m really sorry, man. I didn’t mean to make you feel bad. Oubakir is just somebody I know from Rabat. I was trying to work out your connection.”

  “It’s fine.” A female guest walked between them. Hulse stepped back to allow her to pass. “But now I really need to go and lie down. I need to rest. I’ll see you around, Sebastian. Take good care of yourself.”

  23

  As soon as Hulse had closed the door, Carradine hurried back to the lounge. Of all people and of all things, he found himself thinking of Simon MacCorkindale in Death on the Nile, scurrying along the side of a ship having committed murder in the dead of night. He returned to the same armchair in which he had been sitting ten minutes earlier and strained to see what was going on at the swimming pool.

  Bartok had gone.

  The table where she had been sitting was now empty. There were no guests seated on the patio, nobody swimming in the pool. Panic stretched out inside Carradine. He hurried to the reception desk, looked in the dining room, searched each of the lounges on the ground floor. There was a tradesman’s gate at the back of the riad leading to a maintenance area where a van and two cars were parked at the edge of a quiet street. Carradine peered over the gate but could see no sign of LASZLO. He went to the spa and asked if a woman fitting Bartok’s description was receiving treatment. The receptionist shook her head. Carradine went out into the gardens, looked up and saw Michael McKenna coming out of his room on the first floor of the riad.

  “Mr. McKenna!”

  McKenna squinted, again raising a hand to block out the sun.

  “Hello?”

  Carradine walked up a short flight of steps.

  “I’m sorry to bother you,” he said. “I’m Kit Carradine, one of the writers…”

  “I know who you are.”

  “I was just wondering. The young woman you were talking to by the pool. Is she staying here?”

  McKenna gave him an appraising smile, making the immediate—and not entirely incorrect assumption—that Carradine was attracted to Bartok and trying to track her down.

  “I’m afraid not,” he said. “I met her at the festival. She wanted to talk about books. I invited her in. Lovely girl. Clever. Hungarian originally.”

  “I know,” Carradine replied.

  “You were the fella that sent the package. What was that all about?”

  “Long story. Did she say where she was going? Did she leave a number, a card?”

  McKenna shook his head. He was carrying a swimming towel and a bottle of Factor 50 suntan lotion. His skin was the color of chalk.

  “So you have no idea where she went?”

  “Afraid not. You might have to go looking for her.…”

  “Tell me about it,” Kit replied. “Who was the other man there? The black guy? I thought I recognized him.”

  “Oh, just some big-shot editor from New York. Think he was trying his luck as well.” McKenna chuckled to himself. “Sorry not to be more helpful, young man. To be honest she did look a bit taken aback when she read your billet-doux.”

  “She opened it?”

  Carradine was impressed that Bartok would have taken such a risk in the open.

  “Absolutely she did. Caused quite the intake of breath.”

  They walked down the steps. McKenna suggested that Carradine join him for a drink at seven o’clock, an invitation he accepted on the basis that he expected never again to set eyes on Lara Bartok and would need several consolation martinis. McKenna headed for the pool, waving the bottle of suntan lotion over his head as he went.

  “Good luck!” he cried out. “May Cupid strike!”

  Carradine continued to look in every corner of the riad. He headed to the reception desk with the intention of finding out the name of the editor from New York. It was possible that he was staying in the riad and that Bartok was in his room. He was about to speak to the same member of the staff who had earlier removed t
he package from the safe when he saw Mohammed Oubakir sitting in the same chair that Hulse had occupied less than an hour earlier. In the dismay of losing Bartok, he had completely forgotten about their meeting.

  “Mohammed.”

  “I apologize, Kit. I am early. I was going to…”

  “It’s OK.”

  They shook hands. Carradine was wondering what he was going to say about the package: Mantis would expect it to be handed over intact. If Oubakir was still under Agency surveillance, Hulse would now know that he had visited the riad. Carradine could feel the outside world pressing in on him, the slow, irrevocable squeeze of American power.

  “You look well.”

  “Thank you,” he replied. “Listen, I need to talk.”

  “Of course.”

  He led Oubakir to the table where Bartok had been sitting with McKenna. The Irishman was lying on a sun lounger on the far side of the pool wearing sunglasses and a pair of bright red Speedos. His short, hairless body was entirely caked in sun cream. He looked like a patient in a burns unit.

  “What is the problem, please?” Oubakir asked.

  “I should have texted you.” Was it his imagination or could Carradine smell a trace of Bartok’s perfume on the chair? “I saw the girl. I’ve given her the package.”

  The Moroccan was stunned.

  “Really? This is good news. Have you told London?”

  Carradine nodded. It had been an afternoon of lies. One more wouldn’t do any harm. “So you can go back to Rabat,” he suggested. “No need to stay in Marrakech.”

  “I see.”

  They ordered mint tea, drinking it in the shade of the colonnade. They talked about politics and Morocco under French rule while the award-winning Irish novelist in red Speedos turned pink by the side of the pool. As the conversation progressed, a distracted Carradine began to feel that he had reached the end of the road. He had defied the Service and found LASZLO. Bartok had been given the package; her future now lay in her own hands. Doubtless she was already on her way to the airport or to the train station armed with the Rodriguez passport and several thousand dirhams extracted from the nearest ATM. There was, however, a silver lining. Mantis had doubted Carradine’s ability to find Bartok and had fired him. Yet he had proven his worth, not least by putting Hulse off the scent. If Bartok survived and made it to London, Carradine could surely expect further work from the Service.

  As their conversation drew to a close, he shook Oubakir’s hand and wished him well. Oubakir congratulated him a second time on making contact with Rodriguez and headed back out into the Medina. Settling the bill for their tea, Carradine glanced toward the pool. McKenna had long gone. The water looked calm and inviting. He decided to go for a swim and made his way back to his room.

  The maid was still sweeping up in the courtyard. When she saw him, she smiled, moving quickly into another section of the riad. Carradine took out his key, turned it in the lock and went into the room.

  Bartok came at him as soon as he had closed the door.

  “Who are you?” she said, pushing her hands into his chest. “And how the fuck do you know Robert Mantis?”

  24

  Carradine fell backwards toward the bed.

  “Jesus!” he said, regaining his balance and looking quickly around to see if anybody else was in the room. “How did you get in here?”

  “Answer me,” she hissed.

  Bartok was taller and physically stronger than he had expected. She had removed her veil to reveal hair dyed peroxide blond and cut short above the neck. Her eyes were fierce and unforgiving. Plainly she wasn’t interested in explaining the whys and wherefores of how she had managed to break into the room. Carradine suspected that she had found it extremely easy.

  “Answer you about what?” he said.

  “Keep your voice down.”

  “Answer. You. About. What?” he replied in a comic stage whisper. Bartok looked baffled.

  “I want to know why you are here,” she said.

  She picked up the remote control and turned on the television, the news headlines on BBC World smothering the sound of their conversation.

  “My name is Kit Carradine,” he replied. “I’m a writer.…”

  “I know who you are.”

  “I met Robert a couple of weeks ago. Less. Or rather he met me. He asked me to work for him. For the Service. To do them a favor while I was out here in Morocco. He asked me to look for you. He wanted me to try to find you.”

  Bartok was watching Carradine very carefully, sizing him up, trying to assess if she was being lied to. He heard the sound of laughter in the courtyard and suggested that they move down into the bathroom, which was excavated below ground level and sealed with a heavy wooden door.

  “Thick walls,” he explained. “We won’t be heard.”

  “Fine,” Bartok replied.

  They stepped down into the bathroom. Bartok sat in a narrow rattan chair beside the sink. Carradine perched on the edge of the bath. He looked for the tattoo on her left wrist but could see nothing.

  “Mantis gave me a copy of your photograph,” he said. “The same one that’s in the passport. I saw some others in London and Casablanca. That’s how I recognized you.”

  “What photographs in Casablanca?” she said, plainly concerned. “Where? How?”

  “It’s a long story.”

  Her watchfulness made him think of the animals at the watering hole, wary of predators, alert to every threat. Yet Bartok seemed at the same time fearless and capable. He had the sense of an intuitive, highly intelligent woman who had made an assessment of his character and intentions within seconds of meeting him.

  “I’ve got all night,” she said.

  “I’d better start at the beginning then,” he replied.

  He did just that, describing his first encounters with Mantis in London, his subsequent discovery that “Maria Rodriguez” was the estranged girlfriend of Ivan Simakov. He told Bartok about the €3,000 payment he had left at the Sheraton for a man named “Abdullah Aziz” who may, or may not, have been Ramón, the Spaniard he had met on the flight to Casablanca. He told her about the photographs he had seen on Oubakir’s phone and their subsequent meetings in Marrakech, the most recent of which had wrapped up less than an hour earlier. He described Ramón’s appearance in Blaine’s in the company of a man identified by Oubakir as an American spy. That same American, Sebastian Hulse, had paid Carradine an unsolicited visit at the riad earlier that afternoon and had asked him to sign a book to “Lara,” a tactic probably designed to unsettle him. Bartok listened intently, interrupting frequently to check a detail and to ensure that she had understood Carradine correctly. She was particularly interested in Mantis’s assertion that she had been spotted in northwest Africa and that the Service was “100 percent certain” she had settled in Morocco.

  “Why did he think that I wanted to return to the UK?” she asked.

  Carradine told her that he did not know the answer to her question. Rarely had he experienced somebody attending to his words so closely and assiduously. At no point did Bartok give any outward indication that she was frightened, yet her tireless, detailed questions left him in no doubt that she was deeply concerned. The picture he was painting—of a possible Russian-American plot to kill her—was as malign as it was morally indefensible. By the time Carradine had finished, they had moved back into the bedroom. Bartok sat on a leather armchair beside the television, Carradine on the side of the double bed farthest from the door. The television remained switched on to disguise their conversation. The same set of headlines on BBC World had been broadcast three times, at hourly intervals. A man had been arrested for the murder of Andreas Röhl, the AFD politician assassinated in Germany. Bartok made no comment on the story other than to point out that Röhl had been accused of taking money from sources inside Russia in order to further his political career.

  “What more do you know about Robert?” she asked. Carradine could not tell if the question was an attempt to f
ind out how deeply Carradine himself was embedded within the Service or a more personal inquiry into the well-being of a man for whom she possibly harbored romantic feelings.

  “I think he’s in love with you,” he replied.

  To Carradine’s relief, Bartok looked irritated.

  “Still?” she said, as though she expected a man’s desire for her eventually to pass a sell-by date.

  “I read the note he wrote to you. ‘I am the man who took you to the sea.’ It sounded like you were in a relationship of some kind.”

  Bartok seemed surprised. “Really? You concluded this? You must have a very romantic imagination, Mr. Carradine.”

  “Please, I keep asking you to call me Kit.”

  “And you had permission to read this note?”

  “I did what I had to do.”

  Bartok liked that reply. She smiled for the first time. Light came into her face and, for a fleeting moment, Carradine saw the woman she must once have been, before Simakov, before Resurrection, before a life on the run had turned her into a fugitive, watchful and suspicious.

  “Robert took a great risk by sending me the passport. I suppose I should be grateful to him for that.”

  Carradine was not in the mood to give credit to Mantis for anything. He indicated that he had nothing to say in response. Bartok stood up, stretching her back.

  “Why did you send the maid with the envelope?” she asked. “Why not come up to me in person?”

  There was a sudden noise from the riad, a door slamming in the distance.

  “I thought it was better that we weren’t seen together,” he explained. “In case there was somebody watching me or watching you.”

  “So you decided just to stare at me beside the swimming pool?”

  She grinned, moving to the opposite side of the bed. He realized that she was beginning to relax.

  “I hadn’t expected to see you,” Carradine explained, enjoying the shift in her mood. “I wanted to be certain it was you. You took me by surprise.”

  “Evidently.”

  She sat on the mattress and began to look at the books stacked on the bedside table. They were both fully dressed, on opposite sides of the double bed, each with one foot secured on the ground. It occurred to Carradine that they must have looked like a married couple in an old Doris Day movie, keeping their distance for the benefit of the censor.