Dying Breath (Cobra Book 2)

by Blake Banner

  Now I slowed right down. Because now I was searching for the ideal location for my stash. I cruised out of the village, and, after three and a half miles of sand of every shade between black and red, through gray and brown, I came to an intersection. There I stopped, killed the engine and climbed out.

  Straight ahead the R206 cut through shimmering, wavering dust with scattered, parched fields, toward El Kalaa des Sraghna. To the right the road was a beaten earth track that ran in a gentle curve through miles of flat, desiccated clay toward a minute hamlet called Commune Lamharra. Here, in this area, May Ling had said she believed they had the lab.

  I climbed back in the car and turned down the dirt track, rolling slowly at ten or fifteen miles per hour under the scorching sun, raising a huge dust cloud that lingered and trailed behind me on the still air.

  After a little over a mile I came to a smaller track on my left, just wide enough for one vehicle, that wound away into the heat haze. On my right the land rose gently into low dunes, and my gut told me I wasn’t going to find anything better than this. I spotted a narrow goat track and slowly inched the Merc up to the crest of the dune, and then gently down the other side. The rise was probably no more than eight or ten feet, but it was enough to conceal me and the car from the road.

  I climbed out and stood by the hood, looking around me. I was pretty sure I was hidden from view from all directions. I also noted that between the dunes on my right and left, the ground was flat clay, with small shrubs, and extended featureless for a good distance. The place was ideal.

  Here I set about digging a hole in the dry earth, which is not an easy thing to do. Fortunately it only needed to be about six foot by three, and two and a half feet deep. In it I laid the twenty-two pounds of EXP 1, the HK416 assault rifle, and the extra ammunition. This I covered with dirt and laid a rock on top so I’d be able to locate it later. Then I climbed back in the Merc and slowly ground my way back up the goat trail and down the far side to the road.

  There I paused and got out again. There was not a soul in sight, only baking, hot stillness as far as you could see. Even with shades on, the glare was blinding. The land was barren and without features save for the dunes, but I was sure, in my gut and in my bones, that somewhere within two or three miles of where I was, was the lab where Heilong Li was producing the vaccine he was trying to license to Gutermann, Goldbloom and Browne, and the EU Commission. May Ling had identified this area from what she had overheard, and from what I had seen, it felt right.

  My choice right then was either to have a prowl around and try and find the place, or go back to the hotel.

  I did neither. I pulled my cell from my pocket and sent my location to the brigadier’s secure number. Then I called him.

  “You take risks,” he said. “A secure number is not an invulnerable one. What do you want?”

  “I think I’m within a couple of miles of the lab. I’ve sent you my location. Can you get some satellite imagery? Something a little better than Google Earth. I’m on the P2113. There’s a dirt track that runs south of where I am, and my gut is telling me that track leads to the lab.”

  “OK, I’ll see what we can do. Harry?”

  “What?”

  “Wait for the images. Go out tonight. Or dine at the hotel with an escort. You are a playboy visiting Casablanca. Play the part. I do not want you going off half-cocked. If we can’t get the imagery you come back and recon the place yourself by night. Understood? Don’t go charging in unprepared.”

  I nodded as though he could see me. “Yes, sir. I won’t.”

  “We have a lot of intel yet to come. Just take it easy for a bit.”

  “OK. I hear you.”

  “Good.”

  By the time I got back to town, a hot copper sun was hanging low over the ocean. I hadn’t eaten yet. I was hungry and thirsty and I had gritty dust clinging to just about every part of my body, except where it had been washed off by the sweat. I badly needed a shower, a beer and a meal.

  In my room I stripped off my clothes and stood under a hot shower for fifteen minutes, washing away the desert and the heat of the day. By the time I’d rinsed off the soap and the shampoo and stepped out to towel myself dry, I was beginning to smile at the prospect of a cold beer, a steak sandwich and a couple of martinis.

  I’d pulled on my pants, thinking of the brigadier’s instructions and planning my evening in my head, when there was a knock at the door. It was the kind of knock that expects to be answered. I grabbed my shirt and called, “Who is it?”

  The answer had the kind of authority only French fascists with pencil moustaches know how to command.

  “Police Judiciaire!”

  I frowned to myself and went and opened the door. There were two of them. They were both short. They were wearing light linen suits that might have been made in the local bazaar, and they were both looking up at me with an air of generalized resentment. The one directly in front of me had the pencil moustache I had imagined, plus tightly curled black hair and the kind of big, brown eyes that smiled when people got hurt. I figured he was a hundred and thirty pounds fully dressed, in his mid-thirties.

  The guy behind him was bigger, fatter and lazier. He also sweated more. His hair was turning salt and pepper over unshaven cheeks. His suit was brown, for some reason only he could explain, and the whites of his eyes were slightly yellow. They were both smirking, like they’d caught me red-handed putting my shirt on, and didn’t realize that wasn’t a crime. I said:

  “What?”

  It’s not smart to be polite to fascist cops with pencil moustaches.

  Moustache said, “You are Guy Patinkin?”

  “You came to my door, pal. How about you tell me who you are first?”

  “I tell you! We are Police Judiciaire!”

  “Yeah, and I’m Kate Winslet. Name and badge, pal. Name and badge!”

  He said something ugly in French to his partner and they both pulled badges from their breast pockets. I inspected them and handed them back. Moustache was Amin ben Abdullah, and his partner was Mustafa ibn Suleimani. “What do you want?”

  “I want answer to my question, monsieur, are you or are you not…”

  “Yeah, I’m Guy Patinkin. So what?”

  He shrugged a couple of times with his eyebrows like he was mad and stood on tiptoes a few times. “Monsieur, you may dispense with the bad attitude, we are here at the request of your Monsieur Buddy Byrd!”

  “Oh,” I nodded and stood back, “Sure, come in. Drink?”

  They looked at each other as they shuffled in, smirked, shrugged and waved their hands around a bit. “Well, perhaps, in the spirit of international harmony and cooperation, a little whisky…”

  I found a couple of miniature Johnny Walkers, dropped them into a couple of tumblers over a couple of rocks and handed them one each. Then I gestured at a couple of chairs by the window. They sat and I turned the chair at my desk to face them and sat. I smiled.

  “You can’t be too careful these days. You never know who you’re dealing with.”

  It was Amin who did all the talking. “This is a great truth, my brother. We must all be very careful. But Buddy Byrd, he is a man of much respect. He ask, ‘Please, tell my friend Mr. Patinkin, what about the Trans Arabian Transport Company?’ And I know this is something that I am must to do for him.”

  “I am very grateful. So what can you tell me about this company?”

  “I can tell you, my friend, that we are very interested in this company ourselves!” He leaned forward with one eyebrow raffishly arched. “One thing is clear, the thing that they do, that they do not do at all, is transportation!”

  I fought my way through the tangled lianas of his grammar, narrowed my eyes and nodded. “No transportation, huh?”

  He raised an urgent finger. “Not none, my friend! Not none…but…” He snapped his fingers. “Very little!” He sat back, smiling and nodding. “And to the trained mind of a detective, this, this, is bizarre.” He pronounced it th
e French way, like he was gargling the word. “Because, if there is no transport, alors! The company it is faillite…”

  He snapped his fingers at me three times in rapid succession, demanding the word in English. I said, “Bankrupt.”

  “Voila! If it is making transport every day, every week, then tout normal! But if he is making the transport,” he looked incredulously from one wall to the next, searching for a shred of logic in a mad world, with his hands raised and his shoulders hunched, expostulating, “now in March! Now in September! Now not for a whole year! And then again in March! He must go bankrupt! But he does not!” He fell back in his chair, shaking his head and laughing complacently. “Nooo, mon ami! This is not normal. This is bizarre! And so, it has my attention!”

  I nodded like I thought he was smart. “So when they make a shipment, what size is it, and where does it go?”

  He pointed a finger at me. “These are the correct questions! How big are they, and where do they go? Voila! How big are they? One container. Never ’ave I seen anything bigger than one container! Where do they go? South! Always south! Mauritania or Algeria. Sometimes they have filed for permission to go through Western Sahara, but that… C’est pas possible. So, always they go through Mauritania or Algeria.”

  “Final destination?”

  “Eh bien, I can tell you what the manifest say, but the manifest…Ha! Il peut dire la masse! He can say the mass, it does not mean it is true. Eh? Where does it go? I don’t know!”

  “What does the manifest say, apart from mass?”

  Mustafa suddenly spoke up. “I ’ave seen Senegal, Cote d’Ivoire, Gabon, Angola, also the Congo, Namibe…toute l’Afrique du sud-ouest.”

  “All of southwestern Africa?”

  Amin nodded. I echoed his nod. It made perfect sense according to what the brigadier had told me.

  “What about the company? Who runs it? Who manages it? What about the personnel?”

  “Ah!” He wagged his finger in the air again. “The company is owned by another company, International Holdings Incorporated, based in Gibraltar. International Holdings Incorporated is owned in turn by an umbrella company, the Belize Intercontinental Investment Company, which is a subsidiary company of the BHIB, the Beijing and Hong Kong Investment Bank.

  “The local manager is Hassan ben Hassani, who was released from prison it makes three years, after serving seven years for murdering an American tourist whom he accused of blaspheming against Allah. Hence the relatively light sentence. He employs an accountant, Musa and Musa, and a number of freelance drivers, all whom have some kind of criminal record.”

  “OK, cool.” I went to the bar and cracked two more Johnny Walker miniatures, then handed them to the two cops. “What about visitors? Do they ever receive visitors?”

  It was Mustafa who answered again. “Yes, Dr. Stuart Chen, and Dr. Ling Wei. Both from Hong Kong.”

  I scrolled through my phone and found pictures of Heilong Li and Yang Dizhou. I showed them to Mustafa.

  “This them?”

  He nodded and glanced at Amin, who was leaning in to look. Amin echoed the nod. “Oui, that,” he pointed at Heilong Li, “is Dr. Stuart Chen, and this,” he pointed at Yang Dizhou, “is Dr. Ling Wei. They visit two or three times every year.”

  “Good, and they go out of town a lot, right?”

  “Yes, mostly to Marrakech.”

  “You follow them there?”

  He shook his head. “We do not have resources for that. But we gather from conversation, from waiters, from whores…”

  “You never followed them?”

  “But we know they leave town via the A7, they have told Aicha or Rachida they are going to Marrakech, then we can be sure they are going to Marrakech.”

  “Aicha and Rachida?”

  “Putes, prostitutes. They give us information, we allow them to provide an essential service.”

  He gave a smile you could fry bacon in. I smiled back.

  “Sure. One last question and I’ll let you gentlemen get back to work. Are you aware of any kind of medical or scientific facility in the desert south east of here, say near the lake, Barrage al Massira?”

  His face went suddenly hard. I saw Mustafa frown and glance sidelong at his partner.

  “What kind of medical or scientific facility, Mr. Patinkin?”

  I smiled, like I was surprised at such a stupid question coming from such a smart guy. “I don’t know,” I said. “That’s why I’m asking.”

  “What makes you think there might be one?”

  I sighed. “The men you call Dr. Stuart Chen and Dr. Ling Wei, are in fact Heilong Li and Yang Dizhou, both eminent Chinese scientists in the field of biochemistry. Now, if they are connected with the Trans Arabian Transportation Company, and they are making occasional trips with large containers down into western Africa, it’s a fair bet they are manufacturing some kind of biochemical product up here which they are shipping down there. That would imply some kind of laboratory or similar facility. If the company base is in Casablanca, where would be the ideal place for the lab…?”

  I spread my hands. He didn’t look convinced, but he looked like he was open to the possibility.

  “If you were to know of such a facility, Mr. Patinkin, or to discover such a facility, we would expect to be informed immediately.”

  “Naturally. You don’t need to tell me that, Detective Amin. I am aware that this is a cooperation of goodwill and mutual trust. If I come across any information at all that I believe you believe I should know you would want to know about, you will be the first to know about it. You have my unconditional assurance of that.”

  He almost winced. “I hope so.” He rattled the ice in his glass and stared at it like he didn’t believe it was really ice. “Mr. Patinkin, why are you asking about the Trans Arabian Transportation Company? What do you plan to do with this information?”

  I smiled. “The only thing I plan to do tonight, Detective Amin, is find a beautiful woman and take her out to dinner, then dancing and then who knows? As to the Trans Arabian Transportation Company, I plan to do exactly nothing. I am here gathering information, nothing more. If they are doing anything they should not be doing, then I will leave it to those who have the appropriate jurisdiction to do something about it.” I spread my hands and shrugged, implying that was the only answer I could possibly give. “I do not aim to cause anybody problems, Detective. All we want is to cooperate, and if possible, help.”

  He stared at me for a moment with the kind of face you’d use to force your kid to eat spinach, then suddenly smiled and spread his arms wide. “Of course! Of course! We are all brothers. So, you want a beautiful woman? Elegant, nice, you can take to a restaurant…?”

  I was about to tell him no, that I was fine, but something made me stop. He turned to Mustafa and rattled something in French. Mustafa pulled out his cell and started searching for something.

  “Here, here! Uff!” He laughed and danced his head around. “Good woman! I cannot afford! Name is Rachida! Good woman, very beautiful!”

  He handed me the phone and I copied down the number. Shortly after that I saw them to the door and bid them farewell, promising to stay in touch. As I closed the door behind them I was thinking that Rachida was one of the two names they had mentioned as the girls who informed them about Heilong Li and Yang Dizhou. I dialed the number and it rang three times before a dark chocolate voice said, “Oui?”

  “Is this Rachida? Do you speak English?”

  “I can speak English if you want. Do you want?”

  “I do want. Detective Amin ben Abdullah gave me your number, and I was wondering whether you would like to have dinner with me.”

  “That depends where you are going to eat.”

  “Where would you like to eat?”

  “You are American?”

  “I am.”

  “Then there is only one place we can go.”

  I raised an eyebrow. “Where’s that, hell?”

  She laughed and it was a n
ice sound. “No, silly. To Rick’s Café. An American in Casablanca must go to Rick’s Café.”

  Chapter Ten

  Casablanca was not shot in Casablanca, it was shot on the Warner Bros. lot in Hollywood, so Rick’s Café was not the actual Rick’s Café, but it was close enough to get you in the mood to start talking with a lisp and calling dames “shweertheart.” And Rachida was about as similar to Ingrid Bergman as Cassius Clay was like Rudolf Nureyev. In heels, she was half an inch shy of six foot. Her skin was on the brown side of black and her hair was an unashamedly retro, Afro globe of curls that made you want to bury your fingers in it and do all kinds of things well brought-up boys don’t do. But she was beautiful and glamorous and I was open to calling her “shweetheart” before the night was out.

  She refused the offer to pick her up and met me in the cocktail bar at the hotel. She was dressed in a silver satin number that was low cut to good effect at the front, and plain outrageous at the back. She wore just enough makeup to highlight eyes that were vast and almost black, and lips that were too well shaped and too sensual ever to be described. To say she was the most beautiful woman I had ever seen would be trite. She was the most stunning specimen of womanhood I could ever imagine encountering. She was as hot as a Carolina Reaper in wasabi sauce.

  Hyperbole? Pal, you didn’t see her.

  I found her sitting on a stool at the bar sipping a Manhattan. She regarded me as I approached, with slow, intelligent, amused eyes while she bit into a maraschino cherry.

  “Rachida?”

  “Guy Patinkin, and dressed in a black evening suit. You know how tired I get of seeing men in cream tuxedos?”

  “It must be exhausting. Do you also get tired of men telling you you’re stunning?” Before she could answer, I told the barman, “A Macallan, double, straight up.”

  She held my eye a moment, smiling, then said, “Never.”

  The barman poured my whisky. I sipped it and took some peanuts and popped them in my mouth.

  “I feel duty bound,” I said, “to tell you that I had ulterior motives in inviting you to dinner.”