Three Wrong Turns in the Desert

by Neil S. Plakcy

  He fed the dog breakfast, and she followed them outside, then went off to do her business. As they walked, Liam said, “In the medina, the souks run by the clean trades are closest to the Zitouna mosque, while the dirtier ones, like metalsmiths and fabric dyeing, are farther away. They still weave silk by hand at the Souk de la Laine, and there’s some beautiful jewelry in the Souk des Orfevres, the goldsmith’s market. That’s where we’re going.”

  It was a brilliant, sunny day, hardly a cloud in the sky, and Aidan was sure as the clock ticked toward noon the temperature would keep rising.

  They passed the empty field across from Aidan’s building, where sheep grazed, a couple of local kids kicked a ball around, and feral cats slunk under the palm trees. The streets smelled of jasmine bushes, coffee, and automobile exhaust, and over the noise of car and bicycle horns and spoken Arabic they heard Elvis Presley singing “Hound Dog.”

  At the Bab el Bahr, the arched gateway to the medina, men and teenaged boys sheltered under the overhangs of white stucco buildings, clutching fistfuls of sunglasses, baseball caps, and round, red felt chechias. They were interspersed with shoeshine boys, vendors standing over flaming grills, and other merchants. Though he knew they were staying close to the buildings for shade from the bright sun, Aidan still felt there was something shadowy about their failure to step forward.

  They passed a poster Aidan thought was advertising a movie, but because he couldn’t read the Arabic script it could have been pushing mouthwash. High, wailing music blared around them, and the crowds got heavier, men with gold teeth bumping into Aidan and moving on without apologizing. He began to feel how alien he and Liam were in this world.

  Even though Liam lived in Tunis, and spoke Arabic and French, his size, his complexion and his light brown hair marked him as an outsider. With Aidan’s dark hair and Mediterranean looks, courtesy of centuries of desert-dwelling Jews, he fit in better. But he was sure his clothes and bearing screamed “American.”

  “This area dates back to the end of the 7th century,” Liam said, and through his easy conversational tone, Aidan could tell that the bodyguard was aware of everything that went on around them. His eyes never stopped moving, and he walked close to Aidan, as if he could shelter him with his body. “Until the French arrived in the late 1800s, everyone lived, shopped and worked in this part of the city. These narrow, winding alleys haven’t changed in centuries, though most people live outside in the modern city now.”

  As they took the main route into the medina, the narrow cobblestone street filled with people moving through or stopping to survey what the tiny souks had to offer. Occasionally a man with a handcart tried to squeeze past them. Fat women in bright-colored dresses swished by, including one in a burqa, completely masked except for a narrow strip where her dark eyes shone through.

  “That’s illegal in Tunisia,” Liam whispered as they passed her. “It’s very progressive for an Arab country. Most women wear western clothes. There have been stories that women in burqas have been arrested, even raped, by the police.”

  “Nice,” Aidan said. “Bet that doesn’t make it into the tourist guides.”

  Liam continued to scan the area around them, moving his head slowly from left to right. So close to him, Aidan could tell that the bodyguard’s whole body was on alert, as if the slightest touch could send him into attack mode. It was hard to see far ahead, and it would be easy for a man with a knife or a gun to squeeze right up next to them.

  Seeing Liam’s heightened reactions, Aidan became more agitated himself. What were they doing there? This wasn’t a casual sightseeing outing. Not with police outside Liam’s house, with a dead American and a Swiss bank account number.

  “What’s up, Liam?” Aidan asked. “Why are we here?”

  “We need to pick something up,” he said. “Actually, you need to pick something up, from one of the vendors.”

  “Me? Why me?”

  “Because you look like Carlucci.”

  Aidan sighed. “Not again.”

  “This is the last time, I promise. It’s just that the vendor has been given a picture of Carlucci, and told to hand over what he has only to him.”

  “And what is that?”

  Liam shrugged. “We’ll see when he hands it to you.”

  Aidan blew a big breath out through his lips. Of course. That’s why Liam was still being nice. He still needed Aidan’s help. It was Philadelphia all over again. Blake had needed him and used him. Why should Liam be any different? And what about that sexual tension of the night before—had that all been manufactured?

  Liam wore the same vest as the day before, though it had been cinched across his chest with leather straps. The pockets of his cargo shorts were full of sharp-edged things that banged against Aidan’s legs when they touched. With his new realization, Aidan couldn’t stand to be next to the bodyguard. It was as if he’d developed an allergy to the man’s scent, to his smooth, tanned skin. He stepped away.

  “Hey, come back here,” Liam said, grabbing his arm.

  “Let me go,” Aidan said. “I’ll go with you until you get your little package. But then I’m out of here.”

  “Don’t get pissy,” Liam said. “I’ve got enough to watch out for without any tantrums from you.”

  “I’m not a child, Liam. As you’d have figured out if you hadn’t wimped out last night and stayed in the living room.”

  Where had that come from, Aidan wondered. It had been his choice not to have sex, hadn’t it?

  “You made it clear what you wanted from me last night,” Liam said. “And that was to be left alone.” He shook his head. “You’re crazy, you know that? Men like you are why I prefer my sex without strings. I don’t have the patience for stupid games.”

  Aidan didn’t respond, having lost track of why he was angry in the first place. The sound in the medina was overwhelming, from the calls of the merchants in harsh Arabic, to the methodical pounding of the repoussé artisans, and the Arabic pop music blasting from speakers.

  They passed souks full of carpets, elaborate birdcages with pointed arches, brass teapots, and cotton blouses in a rainbow of colors, embroidered with intricate designs. He saw a souk stocked with the long hooded cloaks called djellabas, and thought he might buy one, to wear at night, while relaxing and grading papers.

  Sweet aromas wafted out of the spice vendors’ souks; the leathermakers’ stalls were pungent. They even passed the perfumers’ souks, where the flowery scent combined with the delicate colorful bottles to assault the senses.

  At the fez-makers’ souk, an old man was proudly demonstrating the traditional process. Finally they came to the goldsmiths’ street, what Liam had called the Souk des Orfevres.

  “Is there a password I should know?” Aidan asked Liam. “Some secret word or signal? Or do I just go in and say that I’m Charles Carlucci?”

  “I assume someone will recognize you from the photo.”

  Liam paused in front of a souk lined with glass display cases. Rows of gold bracelets and necklaces and trays of charms glinted in the slanting sunlight that penetrated through the medina. He nudged Aidan, who took the hint and walked in, while Liam remained at the street.

  Aidan smiled at the elderly man at the counter. “Monsieur?” the man asked.

  In halting French, Aidan asked if the old man spoke English. When he shook his head, Aidan muddled on, asking if the man had anything for him. “Mais oui,” the man said. He pulled out trays of rings and pendants. Yet he made no move to offer Aidan one in particular, and Aidan was baffled. Was this the right shop? Aidan asked if the old man was alone in the shop, thinking perhaps another clerk might recognize him, and the old man looked at him suspiciously, as if Aidan was planning to rob him.

  Finally in desperation Aidan showed him Carlucci’s passport. Recognition dawned in the old man’s eyes. “Un moment,” he said, and he disappeared behind a beaded curtain.

  What was going on? Suppose the police had been alerted that Carlucci, or someone us
ing his passport, would appear here? What if when the old man returned he was carrying a gun, or accompanied by police?

  Aidan looked out at Liam, but the bodyguard’s back was to the wall, his head swiveling as he surveyed all approaches to the shop. Behind the curtain, Aidan heard the sounds of an argument in Arabic. A deeper voice, probably the old man, and a higher, female one.

  A young woman emerged from the beaded curtain. She wore a T-shirt with Tupac Shakur’s name and face on it, only the name was spelled “Shaker.”

  “You are Carlucci?” she asked in English.

  “Yes.”

  “My husband thought you were dead.”

  Aidan didn’t know what to say. Carlucci was dead, after all. The woman stared at him.

  “Your husband was right,” Aidan said, after a long pause. “I am not Carlucci. He is dead. But I have what he was to deliver to the Tuareg, and I need to know how to find them.”

  She eyed him suspiciously. “How can I trust you? You could be from the police.”

  He laughed. “Do the Tunisian police hire Americans?”

  He took her hand. He remembered seeing Carlucci shot down in the street, and the power of that moment energized him. “I saw Carlucci, just before he died. He gave me the account information, and asked me to carry out his mission. You must believe me. You must help me.”

  She looked at him, and nodded. “My husband is not here now. The police, they come, and ask many questions. So he left, to go to El Jem. Maybe he will be safe there. I hope so. He has a friend, another from the same school, who runs the pharmacy next to the Amphitheatre. You must look for my husband there, and he can tell you how to reach the people of the veil.”

  She reached up behind her head and unlocked the chain from around her neck. “Give him this, to prove that you have been to see me and that I trusted you.” She showed him an eyeball on a thin gold chain.

  At least it looked like an eyeball. Aidan recognized it as one of the eye charms you saw all over the Muslim world, though this was particularly beautiful and encased in an elaborate gold filigree case. She motioned him to lean forward, and he did. She undid the catch of the chain and slipped it around his neck, then hooked it closed. “Do not remove this until you reach my husband,” she said. “It will protect you and guide you.”

  “Thank you,” Aidan said, lifting his head. “But where do I go? You said your husband is in El Jem? Is that another city, or a neighborhood in Tunis?”

  The old man leaned out from behind the curtain and began to argue with the woman again. She waved her hand at him and said a few curt words. He ducked behind the curtain, leaving the beads rustling.

  “There is a train to El Jem, in the south,” the woman said to Aidan. “Now you must go. There are eyes all over the medina. You may already have been seen.”

  Aidan bowed and said, “Salaam aleikum.”

  “Aleikum salaam,” she said. “May Allah protect you and our country.”

  As Aidan stepped out into the chaos of the souk, Liam took his arm and steered him back the way they had come. “You got whatever it was you were supposed to?”

  “No. The goldsmith was questioned by the police, and he left for a friend’s place in some other city. I convinced his wife that we were trying to help, and she gave me an eye charm, on a chain around my neck. I’m supposed to give it to take it to her husband in this other city, and then he will tell us how to find this tribe. She called them the people of the veil.”

  “We’ll figure it all out at your apartment. Let’s focus on getting out of the medina for now,” Liam said grimly.

  “The woman, I think she must have been the merchant’s daughter or daughter-in-law, she said there are eyes everywhere, that we may already have been spotted. Spotted by whom?”

  “I don’t know,” Liam said. The smell of the food around them was intoxicating and Aidan’s stomach grumbled, despite the coffee and pastry they’d had for breakfast. They passed chechia-wearing men sitting on wire chairs, sipping mint tea and smoking chicha pipes.

  As they reached the Bab el Bahr, ready to move back into the modern city, Liam grabbed Aidan’s arm. “There are police up ahead,” he said. “See, on the right and the left. They haven’t spotted us yet, but they’ll get us as soon as we walk through that arch.”

  “Not if we’re in disguise,” Aidan said. “Follow me.”

  “Aidan,” Liam said, but Aidan was already on his way back into the medina, heading to the souk he’d noticed that sold the Moroccan-style djellabas. When they reached it, recognition dawned in the bodyguard’s eyes. “Good idea,” he said. In rapid Arabic, he negotiated with the vendor for two djellabas. Aidan’s was an off-white, with vertical black stripes. Liam pulled the hood over his head, and nodded his approval.

  The only djellaba in the souk large enough for Liam was decorated in an elaborate scrollwork motif. He didn’t look happy with it, and negotiated an extra minute with the vendor, clearly asking if it was the only one. The merchant just shrugged. Liam pulled some dinars out of his pocket, paid the man, and shrugged into his djellaba.

  Disguised, they hurried back to the Bab el Bahr. Focused on the soldiers ahead, neither of them noticed the three men approaching from the rear.

  9 - Looking for Liam

  Two of the men went for Liam. The squat, bulky man took one arm, and the oldest one, a middle-aged man with a grizzled chin and a shirt studded with epaulets, took the other. The man who grabbed Aidan was small and wiry, with a gold front tooth that glinted in the sunlight. The crowd made a space around them, and out of the corner of Aidan’s eye he saw two police officers rushing toward them.

  Liam kicked the younger of the men holding him in the chest, which knocked his left arm free, and then he used that arm to punch the older one, who ducked and twisted, maintaining his vise grip.

  Aidan leaned in close to Gold Tooth and kissed him, hard on the lips. The man reacted as Aidan expected, backing away with an expression of disgust on his face. Then with his free right hand Aidan reached to the Arab’s groin. He found the man’s dick, grabbed hold, and squeezed. Gold Tooth shouted a curse in Arabic, and relaxed his iron grip on Aidan’s left arm for a moment.

  That was all Aidan needed. He twisted free and ran, picking up the bottom of the djellaba. As soon as he’d turned into a crowded street, he stepped close to a building and pulled the djellaba off over his head. It wasn’t as good a disguise as he’d expected.

  Across from him, a souk sold tourist crap—t-shirts, ball caps, postcards, and other souvenirs from a happy trip to Tunisia. He darted in there, and bought an oversized t-shirt with “Bienvenue a Tunis” scrolled across it, a cap with a deep brim, and a pair of big, cheap sunglasses.

  He dumped the djellaba into a plastic bag, pulled the t-shirt over his own, and slapped on the cap and the glasses. Checking his reflection, he looked like a different person. He hoped whoever was chasing him would agree.

  As he walked back into the medina, Aidan heard the rise of angry voices behind him, but he spotted a group of American and European tourists, mostly middle-aged, overweight, wearing t-shirts and sun visors, and slid his way into their midst. For several blocks, he kept his head down, surrounded by what he figured out was a tour group from a cruise ship. He half-listened to the French-accented guide’s descriptions of the various souks and the history of the area, keeping his eye out for Liam or for anyone who might be chasing him.

  After about fifteen minutes, Aidan ditched the tour group and walked from street to street and souk to souk. He had no idea where he was, but he’d walked so much over the past few days that he felt confident he could find his way back to his apartment. He hoped Liam could do the same.

  There seemed to be a lot more police in the medina than there had been on the way to the goldsmith’s shop, but no one stopped him. His heart raced each time he passed a pair of officers, though, and when he finally exited the medina he found himself in a part of the city he didn’t recognize.

  He hailed a louage, a k
ind of shared inner-city taxi, and sat among a mixture of locals and European tourists, scanning the streets they passed, looking for a familiar landmark. A police car passed, sirens blaring, heading back toward the medina, and Aidan worried that the soldiers at the Bab el Bahr had picked up Liam. What would happen to him in a Tunisian jail or prison? Would he crack, and reveal Aidan’s name and address? Was it even safe for Aidan to go home?

  Hours had passed since Aidan and Liam had set out for the medina, and Aidan was starving. When he finally got out of the louage, a half-dozen blocks from his apartment, he bought a sandwich from a street vendor, a pita spread with olive paste, and gobbled it in a couple of bites.

  Liam was nowhere in sight when Aidan approached his building, and there were no cops or unsavory characters lurking around. He acted as he thought Liam would, looking around, trying to identify places where someone might hide, evaluating the purposes of all those around.

  When he thought it was safe, he walked up to the door of the apartment building, his heart pounding. No one followed him, and he went inside, where he found the dog once again sprawled in front of his apartment door.

  He paused and rubbed her behind the ears. If Liam had already been here, he’d have let the dog in, wouldn’t he? Even so, Aidan hesitated before putting his key in the lock. He took a deep breath, slotted the key, and turned the handle. The door squeaked as he opened it, and the dog pushed ahead and went to the kitchen. Aidan sighed, walked inside and locked the door behind him. He gave the dog some fresh water, and drank a full bottle of orange soda.

  By the time evening fell, with no sign of Liam, Aidan was sure the bodyguard had been arrested. He had a feeling that Liam would hold up under questioning, at least for a while. But Aidan kept worrying. Should he leave the apartment? Where could he go? What if Liam were killed? What should Aidan do with the eye charm? What if the police showed up at his door?

  He tried to remember the name of the man at the embassy Liam had told him to take Carlucci’s luggage to, but he couldn’t. He supposed he could go to the embassy and demand that they find Liam, an American citizen, a former Navy SEAL. But what if Liam had escaped from the attackers and was hiding in the city? Would Aidan put him in more danger by reporting him?