Relative Danger

by Charles Benoit

  “Good morning, I am looking for a Mr. Ahmed. Is he in?”

  “Tea?” asked a short man in a red vest and bow tie.

  “No, just can I talk to Mr. Ahmed?”

  “No tea? Coffee?”

  “I’m looking for Mr. Ahmed,” Doug said, trying not to raise his voice, but knowing that he was. “I need to talk to Mr. Ahmed. I have a message for him from America.”

  “Oh,” the short man said. “A message from America for Mr. Ahmed. I am Mr. Ahmed. Please sit, I will bring you tea.” His English was excellent, but there was a strong, and to Doug, unidentifiable, accent.

  Doug had a seat outside, next to the door, and Mr. Ahmed soon returned with a small, steaming pot and two glasses. He poured the tea, raising the pot up over his head as he poured, a thin stream of mint tea filling the glass from the center.

  “If you’re Mr. Ahmed, how come you didn’t say so?” Doug said as he sipped the tea, trying not to drop the scalding-hot glass.

  “No one in Moroc calls me Mr. Ahmed. Here I am Fahad. I have not been Mr. Ahmed since before you were born. I did not know that anyone who knew Mr. Ahmed was still alive.” He sipped his tea, drawing a finger along the bottom of his white moustache to remove any drops. He’d only be Edna’s age, thought Doug. He must have had a harder life.

  “Did you know a Russell Pearce, Mr. Ahmed? I have a message for you from him.”

  “He’s still alive?” the man said with sudden interest. “I can’t believe he’d still be alive, he was so reckless. We met not far from here, a long, long time ago. He bought me my first real hat. Brought it with him from New York City.” Mr. Ahmed poured some more tea, this time without the flourish reserved for tourists. “Are you from New York City?”

  “Ah, no, I’m from Pottsville.”

  “Is Pottsville near New York City?”

  “No, it’s in Pennsylvania.” He tried not to sound apologetic but did anyway.

  “Oh that is close. Have you been to New York City?” the old man said, sipping his boiling tea.

  “Ah, no,” and now he was apologizing, “I haven’t.”

  “You come all the way to Morocco to sit at my café and yet you don’t go to New York City? I would rather go to New York City than Morocco, and I’m an old man.”

  “I’ll get there someday, but right now….”

  “Somedays don’t always come,” he said, wagging his finger at Doug. “Carpe diem. Do you know Latin?”

  “Afraid not. Look, what I need is….”

  “Parlez-vous français?”

  “No. I just was wondering….”

  “Wash kt’aref Arabia?”

  “Huh?”

  “You seem quite unprepared for life outside of Pottsville,” Mr. Ahmed laughed. “But here you are!”

  Should I be embarrassed or insulted, Doug thought, looking at the hunks of tea leaves that congealed at the bottom of his glass. And who drinks tea out of a glass anyway? “Yup. Here I am,” he said.

  “So, you have a message for me?”

  Doug decided not to tell him about his uncle; there were too many questions he did not have the answers to yet. And this was it, his first contact and his first clue to the mystery. He found himself leaning forward and talking in a softer voice. “I’m supposed to tell you that I’ve taken up the hunt for the eye and that you could help me find Sasha.”

  The old man looked at him for a moment. “What does this mean?”

  “What do you mean, What does this mean? I’m doing the hunt thing now and you’re supposed to have me meet Sasha.”

  “Who?”

  “I don’t know, you’re supposed to know that,” Doug said. He took a deep breath and tried again. “Look, you know Russell, right? Well he sent me here to find you and I did. Now I’m supposed to tell you that I’m on the hunt….”

  “What hunt?”

  “The hunt for the eye, that’s what I’m supposed to say.”

  “What eye?” the man asked, still looking at Doug with his head tilted to the right, squinting.

  “The eye. That’s the code word I’m supposed to use. He said you’d know what it meant.”

  “Someone has lost an eye and I know where it is? How is this possible?”

  “No, that’s not it.”

  “Oh I see, I see,” Mr. Ahmed said. “It is a metaphor. Is that the word? Someone has gone blind, no?”

  Another deep breath. “No, no, no, it’s not a real eye, it’s not an eye at all. It’s a code word for something else.”

  “For what?”

  “I can’t say.”

  “Why not?”

  “Because it’s a code,” Doug said, leaning so far forward his nose almost touched Mr. Ahmed’s forehead. “You don’t tell people what the code is supposed to mean, they should know,” he explained, leaning back again. “Now, let’s try again. Russell told me to tell you I am on the hunt for the eye, do you understand so far?”

  “Yes, I understand, you are on the hunt for the eye.”

  “Right.”

  “And I’m supposed to help you see Sasha?”

  “Yes, exactly.”

  “Alright, but there is something I must know first.”

  Don’t say it, Doug thought, please don’t say it.

  “What is the eye and who is Sasha?”

  Doug leaned his back against the chair and allowed his head to arch back, his eyes closing as his face was warmed by the mid-morning sun. He sat like this for several minutes, not moving and barely breathing. The old man sat patiently across from him, mumbling instructions to other waiters and waving for another pot of tea. Doug tried to clear his mind and relax. Day one, person one, and I’m lost. He heard the old man sip his tea again and clear his throat.

  “Are you looking for a jewel?”

  Doug opened his eyes and stared into the bright Moroccan sky.

  “I would think Russell would be looking for that jewel he helped steal, not some fake eye.”

  Doug leaned forward again. “Yes, it’s a jewel, but we’re not supposed to call it a jewel, we’re supposed to use the code word.”

  “Oh that’s silly,” the old man said, happy now that he knew what they were supposed to be talking about. “Why would you need to talk in a code?”

  “So people don’t know what we’re talking about,” Doug explained.

  “Well, it certainly worked,” Mr. Ahmed said, draining his fifth cup of tea. “I had no idea what you meant.”

  “Not us, but others. We don’t want people to know we are looking for the jewel.”

  The old man smiled and shook his head. “My friend, everyone looks for that jewel. Everyone talks about it, everyone knows about it, well everyone who is my age and who was here after the war, that is, so maybe it is not everyone, but it is everyone that I consider worth talking to. You see, when that jewel was stolen the authorities looked everywhere for it. They said it caused quite an international problem. Some people claim it was one of the crown jewels from Buckingham Palace, others said that the Nazis hid it here during the war. I don’t know what it is, and I have never seen it, but I do know your friend helped steal it and that someone was killed and that it was never recovered. For a while we assumed that it was still here in Casablanca since we had heard from Russell’s friend, Charley, that Russell did not have it anymore.”

  “You knew Charley as well?”

  “Everyone knew those two. You seen one, you seen them both.”

  “Did they come here, to this café?”

  “Of course, of course,” Mr. Ahmed said as he waved his hand, implying that the answer was obvious. “It may not look it now but there was a time when this was the, um, what is it? Ah, the ‘hot spot,’ yes, it was the hot spot in Casa. There were tables lined up halfway down this block and each one filled till curfew. Russell and Charley were here whenever they were in Morocco. Usually chasing after the same French skirt. They were here when they planned the heist, at least that is what the others say.”

  “The others?”
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br />   “The people who were interested in making as much money as quickly as possible. Obviously,” Mr. Ahmed said as he smiled and pointed with his chin to the rest of the café, “I was not interested in getting rich quickly. And it does not appear I am interested in getting rich slowly, either.”

  Douglas took another sip of his tea, all mint and sugar. Uncle Russell might have sat right here, he thought, sipping the same kind of tea, and from the looks of it, out of the same glass. The sun glinting off the fresh paint on the balustrade and the slowly rotating ceiling fan blades casting intermittent shadows over the tables inside—it might have looked just like that in 1948, he thought, but the neon Diet Coke sign and the hum of the ink-jet printer feeding out another computer-generated lunch receipt made it hard to completely capture the mood.

  Two waiters came over to the table, speaking in rapid bursts of either French or Arabic, Doug couldn’t tell, but it was clear that there was some sort of problem. Mr. Ahmed spoke to them both and then turned to Doug. “I must see to business, I’m afraid. And I did not even get your name. Douglas? Well, Douglas, I do hope you can stop back and perhaps we can talk some more. Tomorrow? Excellent. Till then, Ma’Salama.”

  Doug was halfway down the block before he remembered to ask the old man about Sasha.

  He hailed a cab and handed the driver the address that Edna had sent as contact number two. It was written in Edna’s neat, tight script in English, Arabic, and French. The driver nodded as he pulled away from the curb, popping in an Arabic music tape which he played loud enough to shake the windows. Douglas Pearce leaned back and decided to enjoy the moment, the taste of the sweet tea still fresh in his mouth, the shops and traffic of Casablanca racing by the window. Although he could not hear himself, he softly sang along, the words not matching the music. “You must remember this, a kiss is still a kiss….”

  ***

  The cab pulled up in front of yet another white French Colonial building, but instead of a café this building’s rounded corner housed a shop offering what it claimed were authentic antiques, Moroccan carpets, and curios. Slipped in accidentally between three-month-old “antique Berber chests” and overpriced carpets of dubious quality were indeed a handful of authentic antiques, but the owner could no longer tell the real from the fake even in his own shop.

  Abdullah Zubaid had never wanted to live in Morocco. When his father left Syria in 1935, Abdullah had little choice but to go with him, his mother and sisters dead from an unnamed epidemic that swept through Aleppo the winter before. And Abdullah had never wanted to own this shop but when his father had a stroke in the early Seventies, he had little choice again. And when his father died eight years later Abdullah had sons of his own to worry about and no skills other than an ability to predict what the tourists would pay too much for. An excellent location, the building in his name since his father’s death, and no ambition all combined to keep Abdullah unhappily employed.

  When the American entered the shop—only an American would wear blue jeans on a day that would reach ninety—it was still before noon, too early to expect a big sale from the tourist trade. Abdullah put on his best I-don’t-speak-English face in case the man wanted directions to a different shop in the neighborhood. He picked up a pen and started writing nonsense in Arabic to look busy. After fifty years in this business he knew a no-sale when he saw one.

  “Excuse me, are you the owner?” Doug asked.

  Abdullah looked up over the top of his glasses. It was a look that made tourists uncomfortable and he noticed the shuffling of the feet that signaled it had worked again.

  “I’m looking for the owner. I have a message for the owner from America.”

  Abdullah said nothing, his face concealing his sudden interest in this American.

  “Do you speak English? I’m looking for the owner. Owner? You? This shop you?” Doug said pointing to the man and then around the shop, trying to get the man to understand.

  “Yes, this shop me,” Abdullah said without moving his eyes off the American. “I’m the owner and the proprietor, the head sales associate, and chief executive officer for Abdullah bin Abdullah Antiquities and Exports, Limited. How may I be of assistance?”

  “Oh,” Doug said, “I didn’t think you spoke English, you just looked like you didn’t understand.”

  “Yes, that was obvious.” He was not making this easy for the American and he still wore the expression that he knew made even his friends uncomfortable. “Now, what was this you said about a message from America?”

  “The message is from Russell Pearce. I’m to tell you that I’ve taken up the hunt for the eye.”

  “I do not know a Russell Pearce and I know nothing about an eye. I wish you luck on your hunt, however.” Abdullah Zubaid looked back down to the nonsense he had scribbled as if it was an important message.

  “I’ve been told that everyone who lived in Casablanca in the late 1940s knew Russell Pearce. He had a friend named Charley Hodge. They were American, does that help?”

  “No it does not, I’m afraid. I lived right above this shop most of my life and I assure you I did not know either of your Americans.” The shop owner looked up from his paper and removed his glasses. “Is there anything else I can do for you, sir?”

  Doug shifted his weight from foot to foot like he did when a supervisor at the brewery had to talk to him about his work. “Look, I’m not really looking for an eye, I’m looking for a jewel that was stolen here in Morocco in 1948. Russell Pearce and Charley Hodge stole it and everyone has been looking for it ever since.”

  “How interesting,” Abdullah Zubaid said without emotion. “Now why would a jewel thief whom I did not know want to tell me that you are now on the hunt for his ill-gotten gains?”

  “I don’t really know myself,” Doug admitted, “I was simply told to tell you and that you would help me out. Are you sure none of this rings a bell with you? I’ve come a long way and I was told you would know about it and could help me.”

  “I’m sorry that you have been inconvenienced but that does not change anything. I did not know this Mr. Pearce or his friend and I can’t see how I can help you, unless of course you wish to purchase a fine, handmade Moroccan carpet?” Abdullah Zubaid managed to smile for the first time, but this did not make him seem any friendlier.

  “Look, I’m sorry I bothered you,” Doug said as he reached in his pocket, pulling out a business card from the Sea Port Hotel.

  “This is where I’m staying. If you think of anything or talk to someone who remembers Russell Pearce, please call me.” He wrote his name on the back of the card before handing it to the shop owner.

  Abdullah Zubaid looked at the card and back up at Doug. “A relation, Mr. Pearce? I will call if I hear anything but I sincerely doubt that I will.” He slid his glasses back on and watched the American weave his way out of the shop. He watched Doug until he hailed a cab and pulled away into the rapidly warming morning.

  Abdullah leaned back in his swivel chair and sat silently for a few moments, contemplating what to do. Finally he opened the top desk drawer and began setting its contents on the top of the desk. Folders, papers, invoices, and handfuls of paperclips soon covered the worn green blotter. He pulled the drawer out of the desk and carefully tapped the stray erasers, bits of pencil lead and rubber bands into a wastebasket next to his chair. He then turned the drawer over and set it on the papers on his desk. Tacked to the bottom of the drawer was an envelope. Using a letter opener, he pried off the tacks.

  He had put the envelope there back in 1982 when Casablanca’s phone system was updated and many of the old numbers had changed. His father had shown him the original envelope when he was still a teenager, but that envelope and the phone number it contained were thrown out when the messenger who brought him the money each month told him that the contact procedure had changed. The money was not much—for the past six years it was ten U.S. dollars—but it was consistent and it cost him nothing to take it. The money would stop now, of course, but Abd
ullah Zubaid assumed there would be some sort of bonus involved. The instructions were clear but neither the shopkeeper nor his father ever planned to have to follow them. The gulf that separated him from that strange day when his father first showed him the envelope seemed small.

  He dialed the numbers not knowing what to expect. The instructions said he should call every hour and let it ring many times so he was surprised when the receiver picked up on the fifth ring. “There has been a man asking questions,” he said to the silence at the other end, “about Russell Pearce and the jewel.”

  Chapter 4

  Douglas Pearce sat at the end of his bed, his heart still racing, trying to figure out how he slept through it the morning before.

  The final refrains of the call to prayer reverberated through the walls of the hotel. The mosque’s minaret was less than five feet from the bedroom window, and its six stadium-sized, tinny-sounding speakers blasted out a thousand watts of reminder to all believers: Al-salatu khayr min al-nawm— prayer is better than sleep. With the first Allahu Akbar, Douglas shot out of the bed, stumbling over a chair and his backpack in the predawn grayness. Every mosque in Casablanca, in Morocco, in any place where a mosque waited as the sun created a false dawn sky, echoed the call.

  Religion was one of those subjects, like sex with a buddy’s sister or financial investments, that Douglas was never comfortable talking about. He was raised a Methodist but had no idea what that really meant. He’d been dragged to church, literally, as a kid but it always seemed to Doug that it was more of an ordeal for his parents than it was to him. His father wore the same suit each week along with the same bored and angry look. His mother was a better dresser but no better at hiding her lack of interest, although she did enjoy the singing. They never went to church socials, never volunteered for any of the endless committees Reverend Mitchell announced each week and usually ducked out before the service was over, “to beat the traffic home.” Doug could not imagine anyone taking religion so seriously that they would pray five times a day, especially when it started this early in the morning.