Moon over Tangier (The Francis Bacon Mysteries Book 3)

by Janice Law

  I was in serious shape by afternoon. My whole body throbbed, my face was bruised, my eyes were swollen nearly shut, and blood from my lost teeth had sickened me. I had burns on my arms and, worst of all, I was in terror of another severe asthma attack. In the back of my mind, I suspected that I might never leave the cell alive.

  I wondered what David would think of my disappearance. Would he ever connect my defection to his legal troubles? Would he miss me? You can see that I was in a bad, defeated way, and if Nan had not kept whispering in my ear, “Think, Francis,” I might have put my head down and tried to blot out everything. She wouldn’t let me.

  Of course, I was thinking about how David was getting on and not about clever plans to escape the colonel and convert disaster into triumph. That was too much to expect under the circumstances, but thoughts of David led me to happy memories of wild nights in Tangier, which, doubtless because of my injuries, led me to remember the night we’d discovered Nadir, the supposed revolutionary, lying beaten in the street. Even that might have gone nowhere if the Moroccan servant, young and soft-footed, had not come in just then with a glass of mint tea and a little bowl of couscous.

  When his dark face bent over me, I remembered the night and day in my studio and the injured man and his gift. I held up my hand for the Moroccan to wait, then I struggled to sit up so I could search the pockets of my slacks. Nothing—they were empty, every one, and I felt despair rising to meet me before I touched something round, metallic, almost forgotten: the embossed bead from Nadir’s strange bracelet. I handed it to the Moroccan. “Nadir,” I said, and I saw his face change, taking on a new, keen, determined look, before I fell back onto the mattress. That was my last, best shot. He would help me or he would not; Nadir’s name was powerful or it was not. I could do no more.

  Chapter Thirteen

  Although I didn’t realize it at the time, my asthma attacks must have frightened the colonel, because they threatened the loss of a prize already promised to Moscow. As Goldfarber had been frightened of them, so the colonel and his men were frightened of certain mysterious Soviet powers, who communicated their wishes via the whistling and buzzing radio. These powers did not like to be disappointed, and they had their own ways of dealing with failure.

  As a result, I was given a reprieve, with no more sessions in the chair, although that sinister device was left in my cell as a reminder. I also got three meals of soft food a day, very welcome given my sore mouth, and little glasses of vodka that turned toothless sockets to fire but kept infection at bay. When the combination of ancient dust and new smoke started my wheezing, I was even allowed spells outside. All this counted as luxury; truly, everything is relative.

  A day passed … two, three. I regained my strength only to realize how hopeless my position was, for I could see no way to escape three professional and well-armed agents. As for the Moroccan servant, my ray of hope amid despair, he gave no sign of having passed on my message. He did not smuggle a knife to me. He did not appear in the middle of the night to escort me to safety nor arrive at the head of a troupe of Berber warriors to effect my rescue.

  One casts one’s bread upon the waters, says the proverb, but sometimes the loaf sinks. Nadir’s bead, however well meant, did not bring help, and on the fourth evening when the colonel entered my cell with Kirill and Aleksey, I knew it was too late. Kirill grabbed my arms, still sore with healing burns, and Aleksey pulled up the sleeve of my shirt. The colonel handed him a hypodermic needle.

  I kicked and struggled and bit Kirill’s hand at one point, but they were too practiced for an amateur. I felt a sting like a bee, a fullness in my upper arm, and then, rapidly, for though I have a great capacity for alcohol I am often sensitive to drugs, a cold drowsiness flooded my senses. I saw the cell, and their faces with their brutal features and matter-of-fact expressions. I saw the chair, the buckets, the walls, the lamp, and suddenly the notion of going to either Moscow or the moon was a matter of indifference.

  What happened next is just random images and conjecture. Surely I was dragged out to the car. I saw the ceilings in the house and the night sky overhead, blossomed with stars. Darkness and lost time, before a wave of nausea raised me, choking and retching, from the druggy depths to spatter the seats with vomit. A sudden halt. Shouting, angry voices. The colonel moved up to the front seat, and I was left beside Aleksey, who sat cursing the mess.

  More darkness. I was sailing on a choppy sea. I was whirled on a merry-go-round. I was drunk without being disorderly and floating in the night air. Then with a jolt, I was flung against the front seat and realized that I was in a car. In a car in Morocco with KGB men who had a fantastical scheme to peddle me to Moscow as a British agent. I was dreaming and it was all unreal, until I heard the car doors opening, the colonel’s shouted curses and directions, and Kirill’s answering profanity. The car seat heaved as Aleksey got out, and I raised my head.

  I must have vomited some of the drug, for I was suddenly aware of the dark Moroccan night, noisy with insects, and of the narrow road blocked. By rocks? Were those rocks? Yes, tumbled, I thought, from the steep hillside to our left. The road was too narrow, the drop on the right too dangerous for Kirill to attempt to drive around. Now Aleksey had gone to help him, because the boulders were enormous, and the colonel, impatient, had stepped out, revolver in hand—oh, wasn’t he a cautious bastard—to see if a stream of Russian curses would move the work along.

  I felt for the door, for the handle, my head pounding and my breath rushing in and out like a steam train. Could I do it? The colonel was only a yard away. Too close. But he was going to inspect the boulders. I was sure that it would take three of them to roll one, and they would have to put down their weapons. They would.

  I pressed the handle. A thunderous click, which amazingly they did not notice. The door, now, the door. But first legs, did I have legs? I actually had to put my hand down and touch my knees. Legs. Move. Slowly. Push the door. Move the legs. Find feet. Find ground. Hard to do with head somewhere high above earth. Out.

  A sound, a new sound, behind me. Not the colonel. Not Aleksey. Not Kirill. A new sound, a new shape, a new person that touched me and breathed one word in my ear, “Silencio,” before several shots shattered the car lights that had illuminated the road, the boulders, the sweating KGB men and left us in darkness with our ears ringing.

  “Vamos,” said a voice in my ear, before I was dragged across the road and down a steep slope covered with shrubs and rocks. Such a descent really requires legs and feet, and I seemed to have either one or the other but not both. I could feel rocks and gullies and crackling branches; I could feel my knees moving, making an effort, but feet and legs refused to connect.

  One shot, then another came from the road. Someone pushed my head down, and unbalanced, I tumbled, small stones finding every one of my bruises and scrapes, until my precipitous descent was stopped by a thorny bush. Hands pulled me out. I was aware of flashes and bangs from the road and of dark figures and of the night sky chilly and full of stars. Nothing more.

  There was light. Not starlight, not car lights, but the genuine item, daylight, glittering white through the holes in a black fabric. I was lying on the ground on a rug, and I smelled disgusting. But stink is real, and this was no dream. I was somewhere in a tent minus the handcuffs and the chair with the leather straps.

  I sat up. I had legs, feet, arms, hands, torso. I also had a monster headache and a sour stomach. But still. I stood up. So far, so good, though I could see now that my jacket and shirt were stained with vomit, blood, and dirt. I staggered to the door of the tent and looked out as a donkey ambled by. Horses were tethered a dozen yards away, and I saw some camels, too. This was country living with a vengeance, but for once I was thankful.

  A woman with a tanned face and gold earrings saw me, and I waved. She disappeared instantly, and I sat down in front of the tent to wait. Presently, a tall, slender man with a patriarchal beard, hea
vy, graying brows, and an alert, intelligent face appeared. He had the thin, well-defined features of his tribe and one blind eye, blue-white with cataract, which suggested he was older than his straight back and quick stride suggested. I found the locals’ ages difficult to estimate. Their hard lives aged them prematurely, while their dark skin concealed some of the damage.

  “I am Issam,” he said. “How do you feel?” His French was heavily accented but comprehensible.

  “Relieved,” I said. “And grateful and very dirty and sore.”

  He nodded. I looked at his lined and worn face and suspected that our concepts of hardship were quite different. “Nadir said that he owed you his life.”

  “Please tell him that he has all my gratitude.” It occurred to me that his had been a difficult decision if indeed his group had been getting money from the Soviets. “He might have survived in Tangier without me, but I would never have survived in Moscow. Never.”

  Issam agreed with this. “They are ruthless men, so we must get you away as soon as possible. Can you walk?”

  “Oh, yes. I was drugged last night, but I am all right now.”

  “You must eat. Then we must get you to the port and back to the Zone.”

  This was a delightful program but difficult to accomplish. For one thing, I had only a handful of pesetas, although Issam agreed that my fine gold watch should be acceptable to a smuggler.

  “We, of course, need no gifts or money,” he said with great dignity. “To help a friend is a duty, inshallah. The boatmen are a different matter.” He frowned as if acknowledging that the good old ways had been eroded by commerce.

  “They take risks, so they deserve to be paid,” I said, although I would regret the loss of the watch. I detest men who wear jewelry, but a real gold watch is a useful signal that one has the means to treat the young, the poor, and the beautiful. On the other hand, having recently contemplated eternity, knowing the exact time now meant a little less to me.

  There was also the problem of eluding the Soviets, who were bound to be furious and on the alert for any sign of yours truly. That was why, coached by Issam and to his great amusement, I rode into the port on an extremely wide and uncomfortable camel. I was swathed in white wool like a Berber out of the backcountry, barefoot with my telltale shoes in a bundle on my back and with a scarf hiding my light hair and European features. We arrived at the fonduk toward dusk in a big company of traders and their beasts, and even the primitive accommodations were a welcome sight after two days in the saddle. We spent the night, hidden in plain sight, and I remained there the next day, nursing my sunburned legs beside a surly camel, while Issam negotiated my passage to the Zone.

  At last he returned with the news that I would leave shortly after midnight. “It will be dangerous,” he said. “The Russians are in the port, the colonel and his driver.”

  “And Aleksey?”

  Issam shrugged. “He is perhaps in the town proper in case you try to go overland. They must not know that you leave by boat, as they have the means to follow you.”

  I did not like the sound of that at all. Have I mentioned that in addition to disliking the beach I hate trusting myself to wind and waves?

  “But they do not know the port as we do,” Issam continued. He explained that I would have a guide—a local man, a fisherman—who would take me to the smuggler and return with my borrowed clothing. I counted out the last of my pesetas, and Issam said that they would have to do. I suspected that Issam and his friends would now owe some favor to the fisherman, and I felt a little guilty at the risks that these brave, poor men had run for me.

  Issam just waved his hand and told me to sleep the rest of the day.

  The moon had risen and set before he returned again with the small, dark figure of the fisherman, who signaled, without a word, for me to follow him. I embraced Issam and whispered my thanks, then slipped out of the fonduk behind my guide, my shoes chaffing my burned feet, and my legs and back still aching from the unfamiliar exercise on the camel.

  Strings of lights lit the medina, but we kept to the dark side streets as much as possible, leaving me to stumble behind the fisherman or rather behind his battered straw hat, which was often the only thing visible in the darkness. We reached the beach and walked along the hard sand near the water’s edge until we drew near the docks, our aim being to hide in the shadows from anyone alert along the wharfs.

  We were amid some pilings, when the fisherman motioned for me to take off the scarf and the djellaba. I handed them to him, and he made up a bundle and slung it over his shoulder. I had to take off my shoes, too, as we waded through the weedy shallows under first one and then another dock. I could hear the water slapping against the pilings and sucking against the shore. Somewhere, a motorboat started up, and I heard the soft splash of a paddle. The fisherman stopped to listen. He had not said a word since we left the fonduk, but I could tell now that he was nervous, that something was not right.

  I stood beside him, listening, and I heard the smoother purr of a more modern and powerful engine than the rackety motors of the locals. I looked at my guide, whose face was brown and wrinkled like an old apple. I could not read his eyes, but he saw my expression and nodded. “Ruso,” he said.

  Of course they would have a boat, just as they had a short-wave and a powerful car and a chair with leather straps.

  We waited calf-deep in the water for what seemed like hours. Finally, the fisherman touched my arm and moved confidently out from the pier and along to a listing and decayed wharf. A narrow boat was tied up at the very end in the deeper water. It was lit by a small oil lamp, and I saw that there was a man in it, who, by the looks of things, was sorting out some problem with his engine. Small wonder, for the boat looked to be in alarming condition, and it was already riding low in the water. I was to be supercargo to some mysterious and heavy shipment. The fisherman nodded and pointed to a ladder up the far side of the wharf, then he turned and slipped away.

  I waded forward, passed under the structure, and climbed up the ladder. I had almost reached the top when I heard footsteps. Not the barefoot slap or the soft-sandaled steps of the locals, but the sharp sound of hard-soled European shoes. I pulled my head back.

  The steps went to the end of the wharf and stopped. Could I get back down? Back under the pier? Out of sight? Footsteps again. I was only a few yards from the smuggler’s boat, but to reach it, I would have to cross the top of the pier and clamber down the other side. Why hadn’t I let Arnold teach me to swim? I could be gliding underwater to emerge seal-like beside the boat. Instead, I was clinging to a wet and weedy ladder, and some marine organism or stray pollen was tickling the back of my throat, so that without warning, I sneezed.

  Steps above. I dropped down into the water with a splash. I tried to run, but the water was up to my knees, and I was floundering toward the shore when I heard the colonel’s voice. “Stop, or I will shoot,” he said. “Put your hands up and turn around.”

  I did as I was told. He was a darker shape against the night sky, but some distant light glistened off the barrel of the revolver.

  “Mr. Hume,” he said. “We have been looking for you.” He gestured with the gun. “Up, come back up.”

  I sloshed through the water, wondering if I dared hide beneath the pier, but no. There were gaps between the boards, and the colonel had come right to the edge. He would have a clear shot, and I had no doubt that he would take it.

  I climbed up the ladder and stepped out onto the deck of the pier. My heart was pounding. How dreadful to have come so close to safety only to be caught at the last minute. I stood with my hands up. Down at an angle, I could see my would-be smuggler, still fiddling with his engine. Was there still a chance? Or would he now light out with his regular cargo and leave me to my own devices?

  The colonel motioned for me to step away from the ladder. Looking at it from my point of view, there was a certain humor i
n his caution. He really had convinced himself that I was a dangerous agent, a man of lethal skills and secret trade craft. Now he pivoted, leaving a good space between us.

  “Empty your pockets,” he said.

  I turned them inside-out to show him I had nothing.

  “The shoes,” he said, impatiently. “The shoes.”

  I’d tied the laces together and slung them over my shoulder to keep them dry. I held them up and turned them upside down, losing my socks in the process. The colonel seemed almost disappointed.

  “Walk,” he said and gestured toward the shore.

  This was it. I was going to be back in the hands of the KGB. Back in the cell, back in the chair, back, I supposed at some point, in the car on my way to a little airstrip. I stood still; I’d had enough.

  “Move,” he said.

  I didn’t budge.

  The colonel raised his revolver. I saw the glint of light along the barrel and then heard a sort of pop. I’m dead, I thought, I’m dead because I feel nothing but the night wind. And then the colonel came unstrung like a marionette with its strings cut and dropped to the boards. Someone was running toward the pier and calling, “Jerome! Jerome! It’s Harry.”

  Oh, no! I ran to the far side. My smuggler was sitting in the boat’s stern, looking alarmed. I gestured for him to help me, and I scrambled down the rope ladder he’d strung to the side of the pier. I got one foot into the craft, which slid away under me, before he grabbed my arm and pulled me on board.

  “Vamos!” I said to him. “Rapido! Rapido!”

  He started the engine, as Harry appeared at the edge of the pier. “Jerome! Come back! You’re safe now.”

  “Fuck off, Harry.”

  I stepped into the bilge water and sat down with a thump as the motor caught and the boat wheeled away from the pier and the shore. UK or KBG, I’d seen enough agents to do me a lifetime.