Three Wrong Turns in the Desert

by Neil S. Plakcy

  Aidan made dinner, then let the dog out to do her business, and still Liam did not appear. It was as if there were two voices in Aidan’s head. One voice said that he was lucky to be rid of Liam, that the bodyguard had only used Aidan for his own purposes, and that Aidan would be a fool to put himself in harm’s way to find out what happened to the ex-SEAL.

  The other voice remembered Liam’s kiss, the feel of his body. That voice reminded him of Carlucci’s murder outside the bar. If Liam was in danger, Aidan owed it to him, and to Carlucci’s memory, to do something—anything.

  Aidan decided to go back to the Bar Mamounia, to see if Liam had returned to his little house, or if the police were still there. He dressed in his most touristy clothes, with the ball cap he’d bought at the medina clamped on his head.

  At the door downstairs, Aidan looked from right to left before he stepped outside, but the few people on the street moved purposefully in their own directions, and he thought it was safe to step out.

  He hadn’t walked around much after dark; the guide books had cautioned against it, and after walking all day, he’d been too tired to venture out. Tunis was a different place once the sun had set. There weren’t many street lights, and every door slam, shout, or car horn seemed more ominous. He hurried toward the bright lights of the Avenue Bourguiba, and once there felt less conspicuous.

  He walked past the Bar Mamounia twice before daring to venture in. It reminded him of his first desperate attempts to visit a gay bar, in Philadelphia so many years before. Then, too, he’d been eager yet nervous, his body racing with adrenaline.

  Pausing before the beaded curtain, he heard two voices in his head. One advised caution; the bar, so innocuous in the daylight, could be perilous. Men there might be more dangerous than those boys who’d chased him with the knife.

  The other voice, the one that won out, told him that he was a big wimp for being afraid of walking into a bar. That he’d never move forward with his life until he took charge and faced up to his fears.

  The inside the of the Bar Mamounia was a big disappointment—just as those first few gay bars had been. Five or six men stood around drinking, fast Arabic music playing too loud, with a back beat that reverberated against Aidan’s spine. A few eyes swiveled toward him as he entered, but then went back to their conversations.

  He ordered a glass of the Vieux Magon, the red wine Liam had ordered for him. The man behind the bar wasn’t the one who was there during the day, and Aidan hesitated to ask about Liam. What if he’d been alerted by the police that Liam was wanted? Aidan could be putting himself in grave danger.

  He looked around the bar, which seemed even darker and more disreputable than it had during the day. Liam wasn’t there, and though he’d had no reason to expect he would be, Aidan was disappointed. But was he in his house, across the courtyard? Aidan took his glass and strolled over to the opening in the wall, through which he’d first witnessed Liam showering.

  The courtyard was dark, a single square of light falling on the dirt floor through the window. The shadowy bulk of Liam’s building loomed across from him.

  He felt a hand on his back. “Bonsoir, monsieur,” said a man in heavily accented French. Aidan turned. He didn’t recognize the man—but did the man recognize him?

  “Bonsoir,” Aidan said.

  The man rattled off something fast that Aidan couldn’t follow with his schoolboy French. He stepped in close, and whispered in Aidan’s ear. He was Tunisian, with sunbaked skin and close-cropped dark hair. He wore a plain gray t-shirt and a pair of black pants with Nike sneakers. “Liam?” Aidan whispered back to him. “L’americain?”

  “Ah, vous êtes Americain,” the man said. “J’aime les Americains.”

  The man leaned forward and stuck his tongue in Aidan’s ear.

  Well, that was easy to understand. The man didn’t know Liam. He didn’t have anything to do with Charles Carlucci, eye charms or Tuaregs in the desert. He simply wanted to have sex.

  Aidan was so relieved he laughed. Gently he put his hand against the man’s chest and pushed. “Non, merci.”

  The man said something else in French, something low and urgent, and for a moment Aidan worried that he’d mistaken the message. But the man’s hand on Aidan’s crotch was an unmistakable gesture.

  “Non,” Aidan said more firmly. He finished his wine, and stepped away from the Tunisian to leave the empty glass on the bar. Then he walked outside.

  Ever hopeful, the Tunisian man followed him to the door. Aidan looked back at the man and shook his head. The man accepted the decision and stepped back inside.

  Aidan walked around the block, passing the front of Liam’s house. The front door was in splinters, as if someone had broken in. He remembered Liam saying he’d escaped just as someone broke through his door.

  A policeman stood at the corner, and Aidan nodded to him, the way any tourist might. The officer ignored him, lighting a cigarette.

  So the police were still watching Liam’s house, he thought, which meant that they didn’t have him in custody—or that they were hoping his accomplice might show up. If they were waiting for Aidan, they were doing a lousy job of it.

  It was late by then, and Aidan was worn out. On the way back to his apartment, a couple of drunken Arabs turned onto the street in front of him, laughing and shouting and banging into each other.

  Aidan crossed the street to avoid passing them, tripped on a stone, and fell against a building. The men seemed to think he was drunk as well, and shouted something across to him. He ignored them and walked faster.

  It was amazing how different the streets were at night. During the day, they were crowded, bright and noisy. At night, the darkness lay on the pavement, footsteps echoed, and everyone who passed was a potential assailant. When a lizard skittered in front of him his heart jumped.

  When he reached his apartment, he checked once again before he stepped up to the door. No one appeared to care about him, so he went in. The dog was in her customary place outside his door.

  His apartment was still empty. He took a bottle of cold water from the refrigerator, turned off the light, and sat by the French door, looking out at the dark city. The spotlit spire of the Zitouna mosque glowed in the distance, and Aidan wondered once again where Liam was. He might still be free, somewhere in the city, which would explain the police guard at his apartment.

  But as well, he might have been captured by the police, might at that moment be undergoing interrogation, or languishing in some dank cell. What if they tortured him, and he implicated Aidan? What if the police showed up at his door during the night?

  And what would happen to the account number and password that Carlucci had for the Tuareg? Aidan turned on the lights and searched Liam’s duffle bag. The passport wasn’t there, which meant Liam must have been carrying it. The police might use that passport as evidence to charge Liam with Carlucci’s murder.

  Aidan knew he needed to sleep. He had to meet Mme. Habiba Abboud the next morning at the École International and begin teaching. But even after he stripped down and got into bed, sleep eluded him.

  10 – A Game of Shkouba

  Liam battled the men who had set on him and Aidan in the medina, angry that he’d been taken by surprise. He brought his right leg up and kneed the assailant who gripped his right arm, and the man spiraled away in agony.

  That left the one in the military shirt. Liam bent his head, and then brought it up hard under the other man’s chin. He heard the snap of bone against bone, felt the man fly backwards. Liam twisted away and slid into the crowd surrounding the fight, just as two policemen ran into the far end of the street.

  He lost track of Aidan in the scuffle, and had no idea where the teacher from Philadelphia had gone. But there was no time to look for him; the soldiers raised their rifles and pushed through the cluster of spectators. A young woman stepped aside, making an escape valve for him, and he slipped through.

  His blood was racing and he focused on calming himself, resi
sting the urge to rush through the crowd like a loose bull. That would only draw attention to his path. Instead, he pulled the ever-present red chechia from his pocket and slapped it on his head, relaxing his posture and resuming his self-confident swagger. The crowd closed around him, and he strolled out of the street of the goldsmiths, surrounded by tourists and Tunisians.

  It was always easier for him to blend into a mixed crowd; he stood a head taller than most Tunisians, who hadn’t had the benefit of the nutrition available in New Jersey when he was a child, or fathers who stood over six feet themselves. Among Americans and Europeans, he didn’t stand out so much.

  He maintained a dark tan year-round and kept his light-brown hair cut short as well. But fitting into his surroundings was about attitude and posture more than height or hair color. Americans walked quickly, without much concern for their surroundings. On the streets of Tunis, you could always pick them out—they moved in a combination of confusion and implied superiority.

  Perhaps that was why he had mistaken Aidan for Carlucci back at the bar. He had a picture of Carlucci but hadn’t paid much attention to it, assuming his client would be the only American in the bar.

  And look where that single mistake had led. He walked from street to street, struggling between the urge to flee and the knowledge that flight would make him more visible. He turned into the street of metalsmiths and saw two police officers just in front of him. He looked the younger one in the face and smiled, nodding.

  The man returned the greeting, then his colleague elbowed him and he turned away. Liam took a deep breath. His mind raced through his knowledge of the medina. He was sure that there would be police stationed at the exits, and just because he’d fooled a young recruit didn’t mean he could pass a police gauntlet.

  Where could he stay out of sight for a while? As he neared the street of silk weavers, he had his answer.

  The year before, he had been hired to retrieve a woman and her two children who had been kidnapped. He had tracked the kidnappers to a ramshackle building in the center of the medina, near the silk weavers’ souks, and he’d established an observation post across from the building, a tiny space above a bar.

  Before entering the bar, though, he strolled past, looking all around. A policeman stood at the far end of the street, questioning a young boy. Across from him, a pair of German tourists negotiated for bolts of dark red silk striped with gold. The sun was directly overhead so that the whole street was lit, the only shadows cast by the mix of Americans and Tunisians, the old man pushing a wheelbarrow loaded with bolts of cloth.

  From across the street, he watched the bartender through the open door. The man was polishing the counter, looking up periodically as if expecting customers. The few drinkers were clustered around a table in the back.

  He waited, lurking in a niche where two buildings met. The policeman cuffed the boy alongside the head, and let him go, and Liam saw him scurry off. The officer started walking toward Liam, looking in at each souk. Across from him, one of the men at the table called to the bartender, who busied himself preparing a drink. Liam took that moment to dart across the street, inside the bar, and through a gap in the wall to an abandoned staircase that led to the second floor of the building.

  The ceiling up there had collapsed, so no one used the space. Liam had made himself a lookout post with a view of the street through a crack in the wall. He was pleased to see that his hideout was undisturbed.

  Light striped the floor in the pattern of the ruined ceiling, though there was enough protection from the heat of the sun, and rain, when it came. The room smelled musty, overlaid with the aroma of spicy harissa from whatever the family next door was cooking. He remembered that certain boards creaked when you walked on them—but could not recall which ones.

  He stood there at the top of the stairs, calming his breathing, listening for any indication that the bartender below, or one of the drinkers, had noticed him enter. All he heard was some raucous laughter, someone calling out insults in street Arabic.

  He looked across the room to the gap in the wall he’d used to survey the street. But how to get across there without making noise? He stepped forward carefully, choosing the board that seemed the most sturdy.

  It reminded him of tactical exercises in the Navy, and confidence flooded him. He’d always had good instincts, never tripping the fake mines the SEALs had been trained to avoid.

  With his second step, the floor creaked, and he held his position, wary of the possibility of slipping through the floor and landing spread-eagled in the bar below. It took him twenty minutes by his watch—step, then wait. Step, then wait. One of the floorboards cracked, but held.

  By the time he reached the wall he was drenched in sweat from concentration. As he edged up to the gap and peered out, he grabbed an old rag he had left behind a year before, and used it to wipe his brow. A few stalls away, he saw the oldest of the men who had attacked him and Aidan. The man had a cell phone to his ear and he walked slowly down the street, checking alleys, looking into every door. Liam focused on steadying his pulse as he watched the man proceed.

  The man moved out of sight as he ducked into the bar below. Liam didn’t move, worried that any sound might give away his position, nearly holding his breath until he saw the man step back out of the bar and continue down the narrow street.

  Liam let his breath out and relaxed. He had to stay hidden for a while, until he was certain that the man and his accomplices had given up their search. He wondered what had happened to Aidan. His last sight of the teacher from Philadelphia had been as he ran from the men who had attacked them.

  On the street below, a young man approached carrying an old-fashioned boom box. American rap music blasted, and he could see older women wearing long dresses, with their heads covered, whose body language showed they disapproved. However, they were often accompanied by teenaged daughters wearing very tight jeans and exposed midriff T-shirts, who seemed to like the music, and the young man, much more.

  A large dung beetle crawled across the floor toward him, and because he had nothing else to do, Liam watched the bug’s progress. It carefully skirted holes in the floor, moving surely toward some unknown goal. Liam wished he had the bug’s confidence and sense of direction.

  Liam relaxed and took a short cat nap, knowing he couldn’t leave the crawl space for at least an hour or more. He woke to the sound of a group of soldiers outside, laughing and knocking each other around. With a sinking sensation, he realized that they were heading for the bar downstairs. There was no way he could slip out with a gaggle of soldiers below, even if they were all drunk.

  Quickly his small space filled with the noise of the bar below. Listening carefully, he caught bits and pieces of dialogue. It appeared that the soldiers had just come off a long shift, and they planned a night of music, cards and alcohol. They were playing shkouba, the most popular card game in the country, and one that could go on for hours.

  His impatience rose. He needed to get out of there, to make sure that Aidan was OK, to call his contact and see what the next step should be, once he knew what information the woman at the souk had passed to Aidan. He needed to know who had killed Carlucci and why. But he couldn’t do anything as long as his exit route was blocked by a group of drunken soldiers.

  While he lay there, Liam missed the feeling that he had a team out there to support him. It had all begun for him with ROTC, his ticket to college. His father worked in the Ford plant, and drank away his frustration on the weekends. Liam knew he didn’t want that kind of future. The military had paid for his degree, and all they asked in return was that he serve out his commitment.

  The military gave him a structure his family hadn’t, and he appreciated the camaraderie of the service, relished challenging his brain and his body. When he’d been offered the chance for SEAL training, he’d grabbed it.

  There had always been men—in college, in the Navy, even among the SEALs. He’d enjoyed the sex, the way he delighted in swimming and pa
rachute jumping and the myriad of physical activities that his service required. But he had always kept his heart closed. He knew he couldn’t afford to fall in love while he had a military career. The two didn’t go together. Even the straight guys had trouble managing romance and service, and the Navy supported them whenever possible.

  Then his career was gone, and he’d been lost. Back home in Jersey, he’d done some stupid things, risky things. Sex with strangers, without condoms, with men who liked to tie him up, even hurt him. He’d never tell anyone that the crescent-shaped scar on his right butt cheek was not from a bullet wound but a lit cigarette, extinguished on his skin by a man who had done time in prison for a convenience store robbery.

  That experience had been the one that sent him to Tunisia. He knew he had to get away, start somewhere fresh, and the sunburned desert appealed to him, so different from his previous life. He spoke some Arabic, and learned more. When he got horny he satisfied his urges with porn, with vapid young men like Abdullah, with tourists whose time in Tunisia would be short.

  It was stupid to waste brain power on the past, though. There was too much going on in the future he had to pay attention to. Someone had killed Charles Carlucci, someone who probably wanted the account number and password on the Carlucci’s passport, in the pocket of Liam’s cargo shorts.

  He felt an obligation to see Carlucci’s mission through. He should have been more assertive with Carlucci, insisting on a meet at the Hotel Africa. He shouldn’t have mistaken Aidan Greene for the courier. Those mistakes had cost a man his life. Years in the military had drummed a sense of responsibility into Liam; discharge papers, however honorable, couldn’t change that.

  With an effort of will, he calmed his impatience, and slowed his breathing. It was going to be a long night.