The Moroccan Girl

by Charles Cumming

  “You have to motivate yourself.…”

  “Precisely.”

  He ate some of the couscous.

  “Are you married?” Bartok asked.

  Carradine almost spat out the food. “No!” he said. “Why so many questions?”

  “I am just getting to know you,” she said, touching her lips.

  “But you know that I’m not married.…”

  “Do I?”

  He realized that the subject had never come up between them.

  “Well I’m not,” he said.

  “Do you have a girlfriend?”

  Was she making small talk or clearing the romantic ground? Carradine could not tell. He ate a hunk of bread and said that he wasn’t seeing anybody in London.

  “What about outside London?”

  “Nowhere.” A sheep, tethered in a nearby yard, let out an anguished cry. “That’s probably our dinner,” he said. “What about you? Did you have somebody in Marrakech?”

  Bartok shook her whole body in a mime of discomfort.

  “No. Ivan finished me with men. After him, I was done.”

  “You mean you’re still in love with him?”

  Carradine dreaded the answer. The idea of this beautiful, alluring woman holding an eternal candle for the martyred Simakov was debilitating.

  “No!” she exclaimed, with disbelief. “I was trying to say…” She hesitated. “I was trying to say that I was so disappointed by him that I lost all faith in men.”

  “In what way?”

  “In the sense that he began as somebody I admired. An idealist, a fighter. He was clever and imaginative, full of energy. But he became vain and angry. He betrayed the principles on which he stood.”

  “Which were?”

  Quite apart from the pleasure of sitting and talking to Bartok, Carradine was aware of his own good fortune. To be able to speak to someone who had known Ivan Simakov so intimately was a rare opportunity. It was like listening to a first draft of history.

  “Resurrection was intended to be a nonviolent organization targeted against specific people. We always said there would be no leadership structure, no role like that for Ivan. But he quickly became obsessed with the idea that the only way we were ever going to change people was by fighting them. I profoundly disagreed with this. I also saw the way that he cultivated his fame. It became an obsession which has now of course resulted in Ivan being regarded—mistakenly, of course—as some kind of deity. He was nothing of the sort. He was like all of us. He was both good and bad and parts in between. None of us are saints, Kit.”

  “Speak for yourself.”

  She made a tutting sound and pushed him playfully with her hand. They finished their food. Carradine offered Bartok a cigarette. He lit it for her, opening a window onto the street.

  “What did he feel about you?” he asked. He was aware that he was repeatedly, almost fixatedly, looking at her neck.

  “I think he loved me,” she said. She was being modest. Simakov had clearly been obsessed with her. “I think he continued to love me. At least that is what I heard from his friends at around the time he was killed. In some ways I still feel responsible for his death.”

  “Why?”

  “Because I think losing me made him angry. He wanted to lash out. He became more vicious, more politicized in his general behavior. He was encouraging Resurrection activists into greater and greater violence with his statements. He was reckless to go to Russia.”

  This was all true. Carradine remembered the period leading up to Simakov’s death, a phase in which he himself had begun to lose faith in whatever it was that had made so many people in the West sympathetic to Resurrection in the first instance. He spoke of his own attitudes toward the movement and told Bartok that he had witnessed the kidnapping of Lisa Redmond. She questioned him forensically on what he had seen, almost as if she was nostalgic for her own days on the front line. For the next two hours they sat in the reception room smoking and talking until Bartok said that she needed to sleep. Carradine knew that she wanted to be alone and went to his room where he tried, unsuccessfully, to doze. When he knocked on her door at eight o’clock, she did not answer. He ate some of the leftover food and read his book for an hour, drinking the Johnnie Walker and wondering if he should have taken up Bartok’s suggestion of going to the marina to look for Patrick and Eleanor. What if there had been a change of plan? What if they had decided to leave Rabat without them? They might have sent a text to the stolen mobile but it was now too late.

  Just after ten Carradine heard Bartok moving around in her room. He asked through the closed door if she wanted something to eat but she told him that she was not hungry.

  “I’ll wait until the morning,” she said. “I’m just going to rest.”

  He wondered if he had said something during their long lunchtime conversation that had upset her. Perhaps she had been thinking of him romantically, but had decided against it. The friction between them, the possibility that they might become lovers, appeared to have dissipated. Carradine wished her a good night and returned to his room. Soon afterward the landlady knocked on the door of the apartment and handed him a tray on which she had placed a small pot of tea, two glasses and some baklava. He thanked her and took the tray to his room without bothering to disturb Lara a second time. He had concluded that solitude was her default state; she was not used to spending so much time in close proximity to another person. Perhaps she did not want Carradine to think that they were going to become involved; perhaps she was simply taking her time with him. He was not sure.

  He took the tray to the window and looked out over the beach. The wind was howling in from the Atlantic, buffeting the shakily erected tent on the stretch of waste ground in front of his room. Thin clouds of yellowed sand and dust were swirling along the Corniche. The landlady had lined the tray with a fresh sheet of newspaper. Carradine put a lump of sugar into a glass, poured the tea and lifted up the plate of baklava. He was on the point of biting into a small, honey-soaked sponge when his eye was drawn to the newspaper. He set the plate to one side and turned the tray ninety degrees. It was covered in Arabic script. There was a black-and-white photograph of a bearded man hidden within the text. There was no mistaking his face. It was Ramón.

  Carradine looked more carefully, wondering if his eyes were again playing tricks on him. He studied the photograph more closely. He could not understand what had been written about Ramón nor why his face was appearing in a Moroccan daily newspaper. Was it a business story—or something more sinister?

  Picking up the keys to the flat, Carradine walked outside, crossed the landing and knocked on the landlady’s front door. It was some time before she answered. She was adjusting her veil as she opened the door.

  “I’m sorry to disturb you so late,” said Carradine.

  “It is no problem,” she replied, in faltering English.

  He thrust the newspaper toward her.

  “This man.” He pointed at the photograph of Ramón. The newspaper was slightly crumpled and sticky. When Carradine tapped Ramón’s face with his finger he left a smudge on the bridge of his nose. “Can you tell me what this story is about? Can you translate it?”

  He wondered, for a horrible moment, if the landlady was illiterate and would be unable to do what he had asked. Had he just humiliated her? Would she have to wake up one of the teenage girls to ask them to translate? Yet after a moment’s hesitation she took the newspaper and began to read the article.

  “It says he was a Spanish tourist.” She was frowning at the text, as though it contained grammatical errors or content that was causing her offense. “Visiting Casablanca. He has died.”

  Carradine had somehow known that she would say this.

  “Died? How?”

  “They say with drugs. An overdose of cocaine. He was staying at the Sheraton hotel.”

  Carradine stood in silence, absorbing what he had been told. He was so shaken that he asked no more questions, merely thanked the landlady and
went back to his room. He poured himself a glass of whiskey, wondering if he should wake Bartok. But what would be the point? It would only unsettle her. He could only assume that Ramón had been murdered. Surely there was no possibility that he had accidentally overdosed on cocaine? The coincidence of his death, with Hulse and the Russians at large, was too stark. And yet what proof did he have of foul play? What purpose did it serve to assassinate Ramón? All Carradine knew for certain was that they must get out of Rabat in the morning. If the Russians were going after anybody associated with LASZLO, then he was next on the list.

  He drank a glass of water, took a sleeping pill and set his alarm for five. The sun was due to rise at half-past six. He had agreed with Lara to leave the apartment under cover of darkness and to be at the marina at first light. For the next half hour, he lay on his bed fully clothed, listening to the tick of the air conditioner and to the low roar of the passing traffic. Driving images of the dead Ramón from his mind, he waited for sleep to take him.

  35

  The police lights woke him.

  There were no curtains on the windows in Carradine’s room. A bright orange beam was strobing against the walls. At first, he thought that he was in the last stages of a dream. Then he saw the lights and felt his heart jolt as though it had been hit by an electric charge. He got out of bed and walked toward the balcony window, trying to remain out of sight.

  He crouched down and peered through the window. Two police cars were parked on the opposite side of the Corniche. Three cops, dressed in the same uniforms as the men at the roadblock, were standing on the pavement beneath a date palm. They were facing in the direction of the ocean. One of them was speaking on a walkie-talkie.

  The game was up. They had been found. Police investigating the death of Ramón Basora had established a link to Carradine and run him to ground. The landlady had betrayed them. It was only a matter of time before the police stormed the apartment. Carradine wondered if Bartok had seen the lights. He went out into the passage and knocked on her door. There was no answer. He knocked again, this time more loudly. Still no response. Had she already fled? He turned the handle and walked in.

  She was asleep on the bed, naked but for a single white sheet covering her calves and the backs of her thighs. She was breathtakingly beautiful. Carradine felt that he was trespassing on her privacy but he had to wake her. He knelt beside the bed, gently touching her shoulder.

  “What is it?” she said sleepily.

  She turned over and smiled. It was as though she had been expecting him. She did not seem in any way self-conscious about her nakedness.

  “Outside,” he said. “Police.”

  Bartok immediately wrapped the sheet around her and sat up.

  “Here?” she replied. She walked toward the window. There was a blanket blocking out the light. She looked out at the Corniche through a narrow gap on one side of the fabric. “How long have they been there?”

  Carradine told her that the lights had woken him up only moments earlier.

  “What time is it?” she asked, looking to see if he was wearing a watch.

  “Almost five.”

  “Wait.”

  She had seen something. He stood behind her and looked out through the same narrow gap. His chest was pressed against her back; he could feel the warmth of her body, the shape of her.

  “What is it?”

  “They’re going to the beach.”

  Bartok pulled the blanket back a little farther. Carradine stepped to one side. One of the cars had driven off so that only one police light remained, sending a clockwise beam, like the beacon from a lighthouse, sweeping across the beach. The headlights of the car were pointing at the ocean. Carradine realized what was happening. The police were clearing the family from the tent. One of them was ushering a woman onto the rocky shoreline while a second policeman, carrying a torch, gathered up their belongings. A child, no older than three or four years old, was being carried in the arms of a man wearing shorts and a dark T-shirt. He put the child down on top of one of the oil drums.

  “They’re not for us,” he said. “I’m sorry I woke you.”

  “It’s fine.” Bartok settled her fingertips briefly on his arm. She released the blanket so that the room was in almost total darkness. “We have to be up anyway.”

  He told her about Ramón. She was surprised, but not shocked. They showered and packed and carried their bags to the door. As Carradine was leaving the keys on a side table in the hall, the landlady’s mother peered out from the neighboring apartment and wished them well.

  “Merci pour tout,” Bartok whispered.

  “Oui, merci,” said Carradine, and they crept downstairs to the street.

  The second police vehicle had gone. The tent had been cleared from the beach leaving only a scattering of oil drums and the black patch of an extinguished fire. The Corniche was deserted save for the occasional passing car. They stood beneath the balcony of Carradine’s room waiting for a taxi for more than ten minutes and had almost given up hope when a dented beige Mercedes rounded the corner and pulled in to collect them. The recalcitrant, elderly driver spoke incomprehensible French. They were obliged to give him directions to the marina using a mixture of English, French and hand signals. They drove to the end of the Corniche and joined a road which passed beneath the walls of the old Medina. Carradine could see the lights of the marina to the north, across the Bou Regreg River. He prayed that Atalanta was still in dock, that Patrick and Eleanor were fast asleep in their bunks. He was pointing to the bridge which would take them across the narrow river to the marina when it became clear that the driver was refusing to take them.

  “Non. No go,” he said, spluttering at the wheel. “Pas permit.”

  “Pourquoi?” said Carradine.

  “No go! Pas possible! Là!”

  There was a roundabout at the bottom of the bridge. The driver made a full turn and began to drive back in the direction from which they had come.

  “Attends!” said Carradine, becoming annoyed. “Where are we going?”

  It was infuriating to be at the mercy of a moody geriatric who refused to take them where they wanted to go. Carradine produced a fifty-dirham note and waved it at the driver as a bribe, but still he refused to go back. Bartok explained that there was most probably a local law preventing taxi drivers from leaving the city limits; he would lose his license if he crossed the bridge. As if to confirm this, the old man stopped at a set of traffic lights, then made a sudden right turn into a car park at the edge of the river.

  “Bateau,” he spat. It was as if his mouth were full of chewing tobacco. “Bateau.”

  Only after he had said the word another three times did Carradine understand that they were being told to take a boat across the channel. Realizing that he had little choice other than to comply, he paid the driver and removed the luggage from the boot. Two men were sleeping on a low wall running along the length of the car park. One of them sat up and waved at Carradine as the taxi drove off. There was a smell of fish guts and salt water.

  “Can you take us across?” Bartok asked.

  The man shrugged, as if to suggest that it was too early in the morning to make a crossing. The landing point was less than two hundred meters away on the opposite bank; they could have swum across in a couple of minutes.

  “How much?” Carradine asked in French.

  The man eventually conceded and they settled on an extortionate price for the short crossing. Carradine carried the bags to a wooden jetty covered in fishing nets and coils of rope. Two skiffs were tied up alongside. There was the same overpowering smell of landed fish. The boatman indicated that they should climb into the farthest of the two skiffs. It was dark and hard to make out the distance between objects: at one point Bartok momentarily lost her balance as her foot landed on a loose wooden plank. Carradine steadied her, helping her down into the skiff, holding her hand as she stepped onto a narrow seat in the stern. He passed the bags, one by one, to the boatman, who was h
olding one of the oars in his free hand.

  “Watch your feet,” Bartok warned as Carradine prepared to step into the boat. “It’s wet.”

  He aimed for a point beside her but, inevitably, felt his foot land in a puddle of water. He sat on the seat as the boatman pushed off, resting the foot on a wooden strut. Watching the slow movement of the oars, looking out at the dark channel and the distant lights of the Medina, listening to the sound of the water lapping against the skiff, Carradine knew that this would ordinarily have been a moment for the notebook. But he was so focused on the goal of reaching the marina, and so distracted by his desire for Bartok, that the responsibilities of his profession seemed to belong to a completely different person.

  Within three minutes they had crossed the channel. The boatman deposited them at a jetty on the Mellah side of the Bou Regreg. The sun was beginning to rise. They shared a cigarette beside a line of outboard motors attached to a wall at the far end of the jetty. They were hungry and wanted to eat breakfast but there were no cafés or restaurants in sight, only empty modern apartment blocks running east in the direction of the marina.

  They crossed a narrow strip of waste ground and walked along a deserted road as the call to prayer rose from the distant Medina. There were no cars parked on the street, no early morning pedestrians heading to mosque or taking a dawn stroll. Carradine was reminded of a deserted movie set on a studio backlot and felt that, at any moment, a posse of cops would burst out of an abandoned building and surge forward to arrest them. He tried to distract himself by thinking practically about Patrick and Eleanor. They would need to be convinced that his relationship with “Lilia” was genuine and that there was no hidden motive behind Carradine’s sudden desire to leave Morocco by boat. At the same time, Bartok would have to negotiate customs and immigration using the Hudak passport. If word had got out that she was on the run, or that Carradine had disappeared from the riad, they were finished.

  “We’re going to have to pretend to be together,” he said.