Gorgeous East

by null

5.

  The Moroccan Berm was pierced every hundred kilometers or so with a fortified, gated passage through to the wilderness on the other side. Out there, beyond the great wall of sand, lay unmapped territory nominally held by Polisario rebels, but now mostly under the mysterious influence of the Marabout insurgency. The gate at sector fourteen, passage seven followed the pattern of every other gate along the line, garrisoned by a dismal bunch of a hundred or so Moroccan troops, sullen and slovenly, suffering from bad morale and their own version of the cafard, a condition that affects not only the Legion, but any army billeted in extreme and isolated conditions. The passage formed a rough circle a hundred meters in diameter, surrounded with barbed wire and a trench five meters deep. Inside, a haphazard arrangement of tents, Quonset huts, broken half-tracks, and a few pieces of poorly kept ordnance, sunk to the breech in the sand.

  The gate—a mere rolling obstruction, more chicken wire than barbed and set between two rows of sandbags—rolled back to admit the convoy from Laayoune. Behind them now, the desert all the way to the coast. Ahead through the opposite gate, more desert all the way to the mountains where the Marabouts held absolute sway. The convoy drew up in a ragged line not far from the garrison commander’s igloo: a round, thickly plastered white building with no windows, only a huge square air-conditioning unit protruding from an aperture above the doorway and a couple of satellite dishes sprouting like mushrooms out of the roof.

  The major exited his air-conditioned Cherokee and disappeared quickly into the air-conditioned igloo to confer with the garrison commander, a vampirish figure who only emerged once or twice a week and only for a few minutes, at dusk. Captain Pinard and the Legionnaires and most of the Moroccans jumped down from the trucks to stretch their legs. Windblown and flea-bitten garrison troops clustered around these new arrivals from cosmopolitan Laayoune, speaking a polyglot of Hassaniya, Arabic, and French, seeking any news from that faraway city, a paradise considered from the blighted perspective of the Berm.

  A few soldiers approached Pinard and the Legionnaires.

  “Vouz avez des cigarettes les français?” one of the garrison troops asked Pinard. He identified himself as Corporal Hassan; he was older, early fifties probably, and like many Moroccans of that generation still spoke the precise French he’d learned in parochial schools administered by French nuns, long since raped and murdered or deported.

  “Non, malheureusement,” Pinard said. “Seulement des cigarettes marocaines. And we’re not French. All of us—Foreign Legion.” Corporal Hassan shrugged and took several of Pinard’s Moroccan cigarettes, putting one between his lips and the rest in his breast pocket. For some reason, he wore a blanket over his shoulders, despite the incredible heat.

  “We have heard about you Legionnaires,” Corporal Hassan said, lighting his cigarette with expert ease in the steady desert wind.

  Pinard shrugged.

  “My grandfather fought against the Legion in the Rif wars.”

  “So did everyone’s grandfather in Morocco.”

  “El-Krim—”

  “Please,” Pinard said, holding up his hands. “Let’s not start talking about el-Krim!”

  Corporal Hassan chuckled. “Perhaps you are right,” he said. “Anyway, from what I’ve heard, el-Krim was a bastard.”

  Then he made an odd little gesture, a subtle movement of head and shoulder to indicate discretion. He took a few steps away from the truck, blowing smoke into the air. Pinard followed, hands in his pocket. Nothing could be more natural than two soldiers sharing a cigarette and a few words in the waning light of afternoon.

  “You seem like a good fellow,” the Moroccan said darkly. “So listen to me—from one soldier to another. Your situation is about to change for the worse.”

  “Is this a joke?” Pinard said, careful to keep a smile on his face.

  “No,” the Moroccan said. “It’s not funny at all. My copain is the colonel’s communications subaltern. He runs the radio and the telex and sees every message that goes between the Berm and Rabat, Layoune, Marrakesh. Everything, you understand. And he knows almost every code.”

  Pinard leaned forward against the wind, trying to conceal his interest. “So what does he tell you, this friend?”

  “Nothing is free on this earth.” The corporal shook his head. “The free stuff you only get in paradise, where seventy-two virgins bring it along on silver trays.”

  Pinard pulled out the pockets of his coveralls. “No money,” he said. “I’ve got nothing.”

  “You must have something to barter,” Corporal Hassan insisted. “Even a trinket. It’s the principle of the thing.”

  Pinard canvassed his men and came up with a small pile a few minutes later: Two silver earrings—both from Szbeszdogy, part Gypsy on his mother’s side—a silver pendant of the Virgin Mary from Dessalines, who was at least nominally Roman Catholic, and a vintage Zippo lighter from Vladimirovitch, its worn, nickel-plated case engraved with the insignia of the 4e RE and a blunt personal motto, probably mistranslated from Russian into French, because it didn’t make much sense: Try to kill me but I will kill you. Pinard presented these objects to Corporal Hassan as a bundle wrapped in a handkerchief.

  “This is all we’ve got,” Pinard said.

  The Moroccan picked over the loot in the handkerchief and gave everything back except the Zippo. He pressed the button and the blue flame shot up on the first click.

  “Good,” he said, smiling. “Americans made this, when Americans knew how to make things. Did you know one of their spaceships blew up not long ago?”

  “Well?”

  Corporal Hassan glanced over his shoulder to make sure no one was listening. “There are rumors of peace talks, a treaty,” he said in a low voice.

  Pinard and Szbeszdogy exchanged a worried glance.

  “Between who?” Pinard said.

  “Between Morocco and the Marabouts,” the corporal said. “That psychopath Al Bab is negotiating to make a common cause with the king against the Algerians, against Polisario, against the UN, and against all foreigners in Western Sahara. Morocco wants no interference, you understand, with its plans for this wasteland—which is to dig up all the phosphorous and sell it to the Chinese. What is now Polisario territory would become a satellite state of Morocco, evenly divided between the king and this Al Bab. This would put you and your men in a very awkward position, don’t you think? The enemy of my new friend is my new enemy, yes?”

  6.

  The Moroccan demibrigade and the Legionnaires exited passage seven through the eastern gate into Marabout-held territory soon after dark. Great clouds of sand and dust billowed up in the last red light. They drove through the cooling hours, the beams of their headlights falling across the emptiness, and reached a Moroccan supply depot just west of the Algerian border at 3:00 A.M. Here, at the edge of the Hoggar, previous expeditions had set up a semipermanent camp, with crates of RCIR reheatable meals, parcels of powdered soup, and plastic barrels of water buried in the sand in shallow trenches.

  The Legionnaires helped the Moroccans set up their tents in even rows, tap the barrels of water, and dig latrine trenches. It appeared, to Pinard’s dismay, that they were preparing for a long stay. He asked the ranking Moroccan non-com, a grizzled sergeant named Muhammed Ladjal, a couple of questions about when they could expect to move on and was immediately summoned to Major Rabani’s tent for the answer. This elaborate shelter, more Ottoman splendor than military austerity, was made from a kind of stiffened linen, the breezy fabric covered in tasteful pale blue stripes. Large, comfortable pillows covered the carpeted floor inside; a tea service of polished brass glittered from a deep Moroccan tray—all gently illuminated in the shadowy light cast by the same sort of pretty filigree lamp that had hung in the tent of the late Saharoui emir in the souk in Laayoune.

  The major sat directly beneath the lamp cross-legged on a scarlet pillow like a sultan, bare to the torso, wearing a pair of silk pantaloons. His subaltern, a youth of seventeen whose only garm
ent was a loincloth, massaged oil into the major’s back and shoulders. The major gasped, as the youth bore down hard with the balls of his thumbs.

  Capitaine Pinard stood at attention, unsettled by this oddly charged scene. Major Rabani ignored him for a long while, grimacing and sighing and arching his neck like a turtle as the youth worked him over. At last he looked up, and appeared both surprised and annoyed by the capitaine’s presence.

  “I ordered you not to question my soldiers, Frenchman,” he said. “Not for any reason.”

  “I’m not French,” Pinard said. “The Legion is my country.”

  “You’re a rotten bunch of French mercenaries as far as I’m concerned,” Major Rabani growled. “Paid killers. You should have been shot as spies back in Laayoune.”

  “Thankfully, the minister had a different opinion,” Pinard said, trying to keep his voice neutral, cool.

  “The minister!” Major Rabani laughed unpleasantly, showing a row of expensively capped teeth. “The minister is a corrupt politician and a marked man. He will be replaced by the royal procurator as soon as I am able to make a full report.”

  Pinard’s neutrality immediately extinguished itself. Clearly, the corporal back at gate seven had been correct about everything and the joint Morocco-Foreign Legion expedition to rescue Colonel de Noyer had fallen afoul of politics. It felt more natural this way. Morocco and the Legion had been enemies for more than a hundred years; the notorious atrocities committed by el-Krim had never been completely forgotten in Aubagne and vice versa. Pinard glanced around for an object he might be able to use as a weapon, and his eyes fell on the filigree lamp. He pulled it down on the major’s head, but what about the subaltern? This question was answered a moment later when the young man reached into his loincloth and pulled out a neat nickel-plated automatic.

  “Private Jalal is my bodyguard,” the major said. “He won the regimental marksmanship competition last year for pistol shooting, didn’t you, Jalal?”

  “Yes, sir,” Private Jalal said, grinning. “Got a nice gold medal for it too.”

  “In other words, Capitaine, you and your men are under arrest.”

  Pinard didn’t move, his eye on Jalal’s pistol.

  “We were promised assistance—” he began, but stopped himself. The deal had been impossible, a cheat from the beginning. Things might have worked out differently with cash in hand, but the absence of cash gave people too much time to think about their integrity. He wondered now if Major Rabani would have felt such outrage with his pockets stuffed full of euros, but there was no time to answer: Pinard felt a breeze on his back and the tent flap swept aside and a dozen Moroccan soldiers entered, rifles in hand, wearing Kevlar vests.

  “You and your Legionnaires will be taken to Fez,” Major Rabani explained, his voice cold. “There you will become witnesses in the minister’s trial for high treason. Accepting bribes is a crime. Soliciting any such bribes is also a crime. Attempting to corrupt a Moroccan official is a crime. Allowing operatives of a foreign government to pursue covert action in the kingdom of Morocco is more than a crime—it’s an outrage to be dealt with as severely as possible by the magistrates. I can’t say exactly what will happen to you and your men, but I can promise you will spend a long time in prison, many years, before the French government finally gets you out. Maybe you won’t survive that long; I admit conditions in our prisons are not ideal. But before you condemn my actions, consider this—what would your people do if they discovered a covert team of Moroccan mercenaries on the loose in France?”

  Pinard could see the major’s point, but didn’t give the bastard the satisfaction of a response. The Moroccan soldiers formed a tight circle around him and escorted him out into the night.

  7.

  Al Bab, Gateway to the Age of the Hidden Imam, He Who Dispenses Justice to the Unjustified, Thirteenth Eye of God, Beekeeper to the Hive of Paradise, etc. etc., lay on his back on a futon covered with a plush Narguiz carpet in the secret sex room of the pink cinder block bungalow that was his Holy See, getting a blow job from one of two skinny, naked young women, their brown skin pricked out with bee stings. Still wearing his voluminous djellah, its skirts coyly thrown over his head, the prophet revealed his modest package and fat, hairy white legs and the soft pink bottoms of his feet, hennaed to the ankles, which gave the effect of a pair of cheap Italian socks.

  The other young woman kneeling above the two on the futon, her eyes wide with horror or lust or both, fanned the lurid action with a paper fan made to resemble a large tropical leaf. A red lightbulb covered with a shade confabulated out of another paper leaf added a further note of bordello depravity. The only missing elements, it seemed, were fuzzy velvet wall coverings and mirrors on the ceiling.

  Smith pressed himself flat against the outside rear wall of the bungalow, next to a small window. He registered the scene inside with a single scalding glance, suppressing a mixture of disgust and vertigo. A little to the left, no more than an arm’s length away, the terrain abruptly dropped two thousand feet. Al Bab’s bungalow was perched on the edge of this precipice. From the village side one had the impression that the bungalow’s western facade opened only onto empty air. This was not quite true. A goat track, no more than thirty inches wide, twisted up the cliff face from below, leading to this unguarded metal door at the back of the house that was the door to Al Bab’s private playroom. By this route women and girls from the village came and went, serving their prophet’s earthly needs—a secret known only to a few of the Gateway’s closest lieutenants and the entire female Marabout population.

  “Not a pretty sight,” Smith whispered, grimacing. “Asshole’s got three girls in there with him.”

  “One of them is my sister.” Alia frowned. “I have been asked to join these unpleasant activities, but I have not.”

  “Don’t,” Smith said.

  “Those who join are given extra food, warm clothes. You must not judge.”

  Smith nodded sadly. He understood. Men sought power for many reasons, all of them having to do with getting more sex than the next guy. Women went along with powerful men for the candy bars and nylons and jewels and summer villas on the Riviera, all of which might translate, just maybe, into an edge for their offspring, genetically speaking. It was downright Darwinian and certainly uncomfortable from an ethical standpoint and yet a part of the very weave. But where were those disinterested individuals, the selfless, the incorruptible, those heroes and patriots and reformers who did what they did with no thought for the excellent blow jobs they would receive or the shiny nylons they would wear at the end of their travails? All betrayed by the relentless dictates of evolution, caught in the entangling strands of their DNA like shrimp in the tentacles of a squid.

  “What are we waiting for, Milquetoast?” Phillipe crawled up the path behind them, out of the shadows, on his hands and knees. His patchy balding scalp shone dangerously in the reflected red light of the hidden room. He was still unclothed but wore his ribs, starkly visible beneath a thin, yellowing layer of skin, like the armor of Don Quixote, whom he now resembled.

  “Stay down!” Smith whispered. “You’re a walking lightbulb.” Suddenly, he couldn’t stop the trembling of his hands upon the FAMAS assault rifle.

  “Calm yourself,” Phillipe said. “ ‘Courage is a virtue essential to the character of the happy man.’ I quote now from La Rochefoucauld.”

  Smith put a finger over his lips and drew back to the window:

  Al Bab was now in the process of struggling out of his djellah, ready for some flesh-on-flesh action. The plush white mound of his belly emerged first, his tiny erection sticking up from beneath his ample thighs, then his face—round, babyish, pale except for the hennaed square around his eyes, which resembled the mask on a raccoon. His features were set very close in a large, round Charlie Brown head. What an ugly fuck, Smith thought, like a fat albino seal! But that face! It was the face of the fat kid on the playground, a spoiled middle-class science nerd kind of a kid, prodigiously
clever but socially limited. Someone who secretly felt entitled to all the riches and all the beautiful women of the world, but at the same time suspected himself entirely unworthy of the smallest crumb. Who hated himself for his desires and for the darker desires that fed his desires. He was, Smith saw immediately, someone he knew well: an American!

  He gestured and Alia drew close, her eyes large and sad.

  “Now’s the time,” Smith said.

  “I do this because I love you,” she whispered. “And because I love the music you sing. Not just because you will take me to Milan someday and buy me beautiful clothes.”

  “You saved my life,” Smith said. “Get yourself to Dahkla. Can you do that?”

  “Dahkla is far away,” the girl said.

  “But not that far,” Smith said. “Go to MINURSO command. Tell them what happened, request refugee status. They have to give it to you, it’s in the mandate. I will meet you there in Dahkla if I survive this mess. I will take you to Milan.”

  “I’ll do what you say.” The girl nodded earnestly. “But first you must kill him. Promise me.”

  Smith nodded, and she thrust forward suddenly and pressed her chapped lips against his and held them there for a long moment, without moving—a clumsy adolescent kiss that nonetheless had fire and need behind it. Then she pushed him away and scratched at the door. Her blunt fingernails marked out a kind of password well known to the women within.

  “God go with you,” she whispered, a sob catching in her throat. And she turned and ran off into the darkness down the narrow trail, agile as a mountain goat. Smith watched her go. She was tough, hardened by life in the mountains; she might actually get to Dahkla. From there it was anyone’s guess.

  Presently, he heard rustlings, murmuring voices. The door scraped open, a shaft of light fanning into the night. He put his foot against the red metal and shoved hard and in the next second was inside the room, the barrel of his FAMAS pressed firmly against Al Bab’s forehead. The two naked young women, startled or secretly pleased at the turn of events, didn’t scream, didn’t make a sound. They stood back motionless, watching.