“Does Ingrid Bergman know you have her hat?” I asked.
Dark smiled and peeked at me over her glasses. “I have it on good authority she wasn’t using it. I hope she doesn’t mind that I had it dyed.”
“You look beautiful.”
“Merci beaucoup. You do as well.”
I’d donned my favorite suit, the one I wore when I met her. Given we were headed for a mosque, I was glad I’d taken the trouble. Although my mom was the equivalent of a Baptist nun, as a kid, she’d insisted I attend services at different denominations. Mom said the only way to know God was to understand how little people know about Him. It took me my whole life to realize her statement had included her own church. Although I might be bold enough to infiltrate a Mosque during prayer, I had enough respect not to show up in faded jeans and a torn t-shirt. That is, if I’d owned faded jeans or a torn t-shirt.
It was chilly for Casablanca, around fifty degrees Fahrenheit, and Dark and wore her light trench coat. I must confess it was a relief working with a partner who appreciated wearing the correct attire as much as I did. “Here, I have something for you,” she said. She reached into the bag and handed me Granddad’s hat. She’d had it cleaned and blocked. I grinned and put it on; I couldn’t have felt more Bogarty if Dark changed into Bergman herself.
“I thought you said I couldn’t wear it until I became a man.”
She stood, pushing up against her cane. “I decided not to wait. One never knows how long puberty will last.”
“Do me a favor,” I said, putting on the hat. “Wear your camera around your neck.”
“Pourquoi?” Rather than arguing with her, I stepped to the curb to hail one of the ubiquitous, red petits taxis that work the city. Dark joined me, wearing the camera. “Professionals do not wear them in this manner.”
“I wasn’t aware you’d turned pro.” I stuck out my hand to wave down an approaching cab, which slowed. There was one passenger already, but in Casablanca, if you have fewer than three, you can almost expect the cabbie to pick up another fare along the way. Dark moved toward the cab, when another red taxi, a little Fiat, made a squealing U-turn on the narrow street, cutting off the cab I’d flagged and wedging its tire against the curb.
“He certainly wants our business,” Dark said. “But do we want his?”
“I think maybe we do.”
She gave me a reluctant look and followed me into the taxi. The cabbie, a wizened gentleman with white hair and wearing an actual fez asked, “Where to?”
“The Hassan II Mosque.”
He looked up and considered me in the mirror, his gray eyes first narrowing to a squint and then fixing on Dark. He nodded. “The Casablanca Hajj, a good choice. Will you be taking pictures, then?”
“Yes,” I said. “We have a whole day of sightseeing planned.”
“Good, good. Perhaps I can be of service later as well.”
“That would be very helpful.”
The cabbie shifted into gear and peeled out, leaving a trail of smoke and burnt rubber. For a moment, I thought I’d just gotten us abducted, but when he squealed to a stop at the first traffic light, I realized the man just drove that way.
“I give you the hat and right away you turn into James Bond, talking in code,” she whispered.
“I’m not sure what’s going on, but something tells me we’ve got to play this out.”
“Okay, but if you get me killed, I’m haunting you for the rest of your life.”
“I thought that was your plan anyway.”
She smiled and punched me in the chest. It hurt.
We drove a path through the city that was circuitous enough to even be obvious to a first timer like me. We weren’t on the government’s dole anymore, and I was in no mood to be ripped off by a scamming cabbie, so I opened my mouth to tell him to cut it out or lose the fare completely. Dark grabbed my arm and whispered in my ear. “He keeps looking in his mirror for something.”
I looked behind us. Several cars back I spotted a cream-colored Mercedes Benz that weaved in and out of traffic as we did. I’d not noticed at first, as there were numerous such vehicles serving as grand taxis throughout the city. However, those were mostly shared vehicles providing city-to-city traffic. This one had two dark-suited men in the front seat, and the only thing they were sharing was a grimace. We pulled up to a stoplight, and the Benz stopped as well, now only two cars back, with engine revving and both passengers glaring at us.
“The Mercedes, right?” Dark asked.
“Yeah, and they aren’t interested in subtlety either.”
“Hold on,” said our cabbie as we sat idling at the light. It was still red, but he gunned the engine and made a screeching, ninety-degree left turn as honking vehicles screamed to a stop around us. He braked, veered, and floored the little Fiat around an enormous Volvo oil truck that missed my door by inches. Behind us, the Benz accelerated, pushing a small Peugeot out of its way and into the path of an oncoming delivery van.
“Oh là là!” Dark screamed, her voice rising in tandem with the crunching metal behind us and followed by a clenched-eyed, “Oh, fuck fuck fuck!” as our tiny taxi managed to avoid getting us killed by a only few rubber-shredding inches. We barely avoided the truck but then got hit in a perfect pit maneuver by the Benz, with the larger vehicle tapping our rear quarter panel and sending us into what I counted as one-and-a-half full revolutions before coming to a stop heading in the direction from whence we’d come. I pulled out my gun, holding it in my lap and awaited the inevitable onrush of killers from the Benz. Dark had fallen on the floor and was screaming at the driver in French. He managed to grind the Fiat into gear and accelerated, sending us barreling back past the Benz, which I could see crumpled in the middle of the intersection, having been less successful than we at avoiding stray trucks. Both men had exited the Benz and were running in our direction.
“What the hell was that?” I screamed.
“Many apologies, sir,” the driver answered, looking not at me but in his rear-view mirror. His face was preternaturally calm, as though he were doing nothing more than checking to see if a police car behind him had its lights on. Satisfied that he’d gotten whatever results he wanted, he turned his gaze briefly to me. “I am sorry. I missed my turn and didn’t notice the light had changed. I had to make a U-turn.”
I grabbed Dark’s arm to keep her from bashing his head open with her shoe. The blunt heel and her fury would have gotten us all killed. “It’s okay,” I whispered, “Something tells me we wanted him to do that.”
“Those men behind us?” I nodded. “Who do you think they are?”
“Not sure, but that was a bona fide cop maneuver back there.”
“The question is, whose cops.” I nodded again. “Driver, let us out here,” Dark said.
The driver looked in the mirror but otherwise didn’t react. There was an almost imperceptible shift in his demeanor, which Dark validated by whispering, “Yellow.”
We’d been jaunting along at an estimated forty miles per hour when we suddenly ran into a line of stopped cars that would force our driver to stop. I still had my gun, which I’d stashed back in my pocket, so I wasn’t overly concerned with his taking us anywhere I didn’t want to go. My more immediate concern was trying to discern who’d been tailing us, how they knew where we where, and what they wanted. Before I could come up with any answers, the cab screeched to a stop behind the immobile cars. I grabbed Dark with my right hand and the door handle with my left, preparing to jump out before the cabbie could respond. We were in unknown territory, and so using weapons would be a last resort, especially if running was still an option.
“Foss, wait.” Dark said. “It’s the little Dacia from in front of the hotel.”
“The little what?”
“Dacia … the other little, red taxi. It’s the same driver and same lady in the back.”
I turned and saw the other car, some foreign model I’d never seen and as Dark said, a driver and single passenger, a woman
dressed in a black hijab and looking more anxious than I would have liked.
“Shit, let’s get out …”
Before I could finish the sentence, our driver hit the gas and veered off the street and onto the sidewalk. I heard Dark scream out of her window in Arabic, scattering a line of teenagers who’d been loitering outside of a school. We tore down the sidewalk, almost hitting a pair of women who sat chatting on a bench and acting as though we were on the normal taxi route. At this point, being bounced around in the back like a marble in a pinball game, I managed to get my gun out of my pocket and was fully prepared to shoot this driver in the head if only to keep him from killing innocent civilians.
“Foss, look!”
Behind us, flying down the sidewalk as well was the other petit taxi in full pursuit. “Hang on,” yelled our driver, “I don’t know who these people are.” He veered off the sidewalk, having passed the stopped cars and two police vehicles in the process, and squealed through another hard left with the Dacia in pursuit. We weaved through the downtown area, traveling, for the most part, in a dangerous, pointless circle with our pursuers still fast behind.
“Get down!” the driver screamed. I heard gunshots and pushed Dark onto the floor, with her fighting and kicking at me to release her. Once I got her out of harm’s way, I leaned out my window to shoot back at the Dacia behind us, and just missed being shot in the head by two bullets from a second vehicle—another Mercedes Benz that I hadn’t noticed before.
The cabbie screamed at me. “Get in, you fool. You’re going to get us all killed.”
I pulled myself back inside and fired two shots at the Benz. Return fire took out both windows on my side, just missing our driver who’d ducked into his seat. By this point, the faster Benz had overtaken us and had pulled alongside. I was lying on my back across the bench seat with my gun aimed out the window. I squeezed off a few rounds just as the passenger in the Benz fired into our cab. I rolled onto the floor on top of Dark and couldn’t see what transpired, but heard another volley of shots, tires screeching, and the sound of breaking glass.
“Get off, Foster!” Dark said, and pushed herself up. I looked up in time to see our friends in the Benz had crashed through a storefront window. Behind us, the little Dacia was still in hot pursuit with the driver leaning hard over his steering wheel and with the mysterious, black-garbed woman still in the back seat. While I was trying to assess the situation, and in particular if this cab driver was trying to save our lives or end them, Jeanne Dark opened her purse, pulled out her iPhone with its fashionable blue case and looked for all the world as though she was about to make a call. By now, we were at some desolate outskirt of the city nearing a low, brick and stone bridge that crossed a body of water I was still too disoriented to identify.
“Jeanne, what are you doing?”
Instead of answering, Dark squeezed her phone, placed it on the back of our driver’s neck, and Tasered the living shit out of him for five seconds. The man’s sparse hair stood on end, he bounced around like corn in a hot skillet, and then beeped the horn, loudly, with his face. The cab came to rest down a slope, next to the bridge, amidst the dirt and stones of the river bed. I sat on the floor for a time, trying to figure out what in the hell had just happened. Dark sat upright in her seat, adjusted her clothing, huffed, and affixed that damned hat back on her pretty, crazy, little head.
“Et voilà,” she said.
I wanted to strangle her. “Jesus Christ woman, does everything you have produce electricity?”
She gave me the merest of smiles. “Are you flirting with me again?”
“Am I— ?” I allowed the words to break off before I said something we’d both regret. The woman had frazzled me so much that I’d completely forgotten the other cab. The driver of the Dacia rapped on the one remaining, unbroken window, startling me enough that I almost shot myself in the foot. It was a good thing I’d automatically put the safety back on once the shooting stopped.
“Mademoiselle Dark, Monsieur Cain?” asked the intruder. He gave a sideways nod to our unconscious driver. “Is he … ?”
“Merely unconscious,” Dark said, extending her hand. “My partner and I are grateful for your assistance.” He shook her hand, nodded, and then opened the car door. “If you are ready, I can take you to Mr. al-Gharnati now. I am sure he must be getting concerned.”
We walked up the incline to his waiting cab, the mysterious woman now seated in the front passenger seat. I took the opportunity to whisper chastisements at Dark. “You can’t just go zapping everyone you see before we figure out who the good guys and bad guys are.”
Dark bristled porcupine quills at me. “Is that before you have figured it out, or is my having figured it out good enough?”
Ouch.
The driver interrupted my further inquiry by saying, “I hope you do not mind another passenger. I had promised my mother to take her food shopping once this fare was complete.” He leaned in close. “I’m afraid she is greatly unhappy. I did not expect there to be so much excitement.”
“That’s quite all right,” Dark said, still glaring at me. “It is entirely our fault. Tell your lovely mother that my partner insists on buying her this week’s groceries as payment for her inconvenience.
“I insist,” I said, prompted by Dark’s cell phone being surreptitiously placed against my side.
“Thank you sir, thank you.” The driver relayed the message in Arabic to his mother, who in turn gave me such a beautiful, gap-toothed grin that I decided it was worth the fifty Euros.
As we rode, mostly in silence, I decided to swallow my pride and ask Dark for a debrief. “I’m sorry, Jeanne. I wasn’t trying to be a jerk.”
“I know,” she said. “You are just very protective.”
That sounded better than chauvinistic, so I went with it. “You wanna tell me how you knew this was the legit party?”
“It was the taxi I was taking to begin with. I initially figured a cab with a solitary, obviously spiritual woman in it couldn’t be up to much malice.”
With that sentence, she sent me on another painful self-assessment, the result of too many hours spent in dark basements full of human detritus. I’d seen a potential terrorist in the back seat and my partner had only seen a godly, old woman, which of course is exactly what she’d turned out to be. I was going to have to reassess my ideas of people if I was going to take international work like this.
Dark continued, “You told me the driver of the first Mercedes drove like a cop. That said police, professional security, or other such operatives.”
“Yeah, I had them as pros too. Not so sure about the other Benz.”
“Non, our driver took him out with a little Fiat. They drove like my sister. I figure they are maybe this Seize Mai or perhaps just ordinary carjerkers.”
“That’s carjackers, Dark.”
“Oui, that’s what I said. So, what was obviously left, since this taxi didn’t seem to be helping or shooting at anyone, but was following, was that he must have been instructed to watch us, but not interfere. My only question was whether he represented a new contingent or was working under the instruction of M. Hardesty.”
“I thought you don’t trust Hardesty.”
“I don’t, but you do, and I trust you. In any case, we have multiple parties involved—the people Hardesty has helping or watching us, the parties in the second Mercedes, and unknown US or UK government pursuers in the first Mercedes.”
“Why not local?”
“If they were Casablancan or Moroccan authorities then the police would have pursued us when we barreled past on the sidewalk. They barely gave us a second glance.”
I nodded. “Meaning the local cops know nothing about this.”
“Oui. It could have been the cops knew not to interfere with one of their own, but I don’t think this is big enough for the kind of conspiracy that would take. These police were busy and we were small potatoes to them.”
“You forgot one.”
“You mean the driver of our cab?” she asked.
“Well yeah. I figured since you zapped him, you must have been pretty sure who he was working for.”
“Oui.”
After waiting the requisite four beats, I asked Dark her theory.
She said, “I think one of our former employers is trying to stop us. The only one likely not to be involved is M. Hardesty, since we are on the way to see his contact now. It would make no sense to stop us from seeing someone he sent us to.”
“Don’t forget Hardesty said Rudenko is selling himself as being pretty well connected. If he’s not lying, some of those connections aren’t going to want us to find him.”
“Exactly. We’ve made many enemies. We have disrupted the London escort ring. Even though there isn’t enough evidence to prosecute, it is possible that someone high up is trying to stop us from causing any more trouble.”
“Then until we know more about how this group operates, we need to start keeping a low profile.”
“Agreed. Perhaps you can start by not wearing thousand dollar suits.”
“Eight hundred.” I said it, but under my breath.
The Mosque turned out to be an enormous structure—the largest mosque on the African continent with room for twenty-five thousand worshippers inside and another eighty thousand outside. There were hundreds milling around when we arrived, including at least one large tour group. I relaxed then, since the presence of tours indicated that at least we wouldn’t be detained as infidels defiling the mosque. Dark busied herself by photographing the minaret, a rectangular tower nearly sixty stories high and topped with some kind of inlaid green tile or marble. It was also topped with a laser that our brochure said pointed at Mecca and happily not at the infidels milling about. I mostly wondered where the restrooms were.
“Beautiful, is it not?”
I turned and found the speaker, a tall, clean-shaven, dark-haired man with piercing blue eyes and piggy pink skin. He had a few features that could have hinted he had Arab ancestry, but for the most part he looked European, down to his jutting chin. After running a few permutations through my brain, I skipped over tourist and settled on Euro immigrant, probably some highly paid techno wizard. The Harry Potter glasses and the cutesy purse on his shoulder clenched it for me, as did his expensive leather biker’s jacket and matching pants. Definitely not Muslim. I pegged him to be from Italy or Greece and wondered if those two countries exported a lot of technical labor. Hardesty hadn’t given me a description of my contact, but biker boy certainly didn’t fit my image of the man I’d expected to meet at a house of worship. In my head, I was looking for a traditionally garbed gentleman, perhaps wearing a long tunic like a djellaba, definitely in sandals, maybe early fifties, with a scruffy beard and a weathered, but powerful face. I was not looking for this yuppie in custom biker boots who was pretending to look at the minaret while mostly stealing glances at Dark. Instead of helping me look, my partner had her camera pointed at the tower’s top and was clicking up a storm.
The Little Burgundy: A Jeanne Dark Adventure Page 21
