The Man Between

by Charles Cumming

  A man was lying naked on his back, close to the bed, his eyes open, his mouth hanging slack to one side and filled with what seemed to be a dried white paste, like milk which had been left out too long in the sun. She could see a torn condom wrapper on the carpet beside him. Fatima retched, running out of the room into the corridor. She knew that she was not supposed to alarm the guests – she had been trained to be modest in her appearance and behaviour – but she screamed as she ran towards a family at the far end of the corridor. There was a man with them. She grabbed him by the arm, imploring him to find a doctor.

  ‘There is a man,’ she said, pointing in the direction of Basora’s room. ‘A guest. Please help him. He is Spanish. Something has happened to him. Something terrible. I think he may be dead.’

  20

  Carradine took breakfast beneath the orange trees, eating scrambled eggs on toast while watching a celebrity chef doing freestyle laps and tumble turns in the swimming pool. The famous American author and the equally celebrated Irish novelist were seated opposite one another at separate tables, the former eating muesli and yoghurt, the latter attempting what appeared to be a Sudoku puzzle on his iPad. Neither man acknowledged Carradine.

  He went back to his room to prepare for the festival. He learned what he could about Katherine Paget – speed-reading her Amazon reviews, memorising salient points from her Wikipedia page, watching an interview she had given on Newsnight – but felt suspended between two worlds. The first – that of his profession, of his peers – now seemed to him a place of fantasy and escapism which he found faintly preposterous; the second was a real world consisting of tangible threats far removed from the stories C.K. Carradine had woven in the pages of his thrillers. Yet he could no more afford to cancel his appearance at the festival than he could pretend to be a significant actor in the hunt for Lara Bartok. Carradine made his living from writing fiction; men like Sebastian Hulse and Mohammed Oubakir were men of action. He was a writer, not a spy. To think that he could intercede in the Russian plan to assassinate Bartok was foolish, perhaps even delusional.

  The festival was taking place at a five-star hotel in Gueliz. The lobby smelled of cedar wood and oil money. Arab teenagers in Yankees baseball caps were slumped on sofas decorating selfies to send on Snapchat. Carradine followed signs to the conference area. A green room had been set up for the guest speakers. Carradine registered with the organisers and introduced himself to a group of sponsors from London, one of whom had read all of his novels and enthusiastically fetched him a plate of biscuits and a cup of coffee before asking him to sign a first edition of Equal and Opposite. At around midday Katherine Paget swept into the green room with an entourage consisting of her husband, her publicist, her literary agent and her American editor, all of whom looked exhausted by the heat of Marrakech and the strain of attending to the Great Author’s every caprice. It was like witnessing the arrival of a head of state. Her eyes peering over coral-coloured half-moon spectacles, Paget introduced herself to Carradine as ‘Kathy’ and asked immediately if he had read her latest book.

  ‘Cover to cover,’ he told her. ‘It’s magisterial.’

  Paget produced a self-deprecating smile. She did not return the compliment. Instead she said: ‘I don’t usually appear with thriller writers. Have you written many books?’

  ‘A few,’ Carradine replied.

  Every ticket for their event had been sold. They were introduced by one of the sponsors from London and invited to the stage by a Moroccan radio broadcaster who had been tasked with chairing the discussion. It quickly became apparent that Paget was interested only in the sound of her own voice, regularly interrupting both Carradine and the chairman in order to promote her latest book and to voice opinions on everything from the BBC licence fee to the Tudor monarchy. In his rattled state, Carradine was happy to take a back seat, managing coherent answers to only a handful of questions, including – inevitably – his views on Islamist terror and government surveillance.

  Paget was halfway through an interminable monologue about her daily writing routine when Carradine tuned out and glanced around the room. There were perhaps another five minutes before the chairman was due to take questions from the floor. The vast majority of the audience was comprised of young Moroccan students and elderly European tourists. Carradine spotted Patrick and Eleanor Lang halfway down the aisle on the left-hand side. He gave Eleanor a discreet nod. Patrick caught his eye, looked in Paget’s direction and drew a finger across his throat. Carradine suppressed a smile. He looked back at Paget and tried to concentrate on what she was saying.

  ‘Whenever I feel a little bit defeated, a little bit low and flat, I make myself a nice cup of tea and think of my readers.’ A bashful smile, a modest tilt of the head. ‘I can remember my last publisher but one telling me that the book I dearly wanted to write simply wouldn’t sell in today’s marketplace. I was dismayed, of course, but I went ahead and wrote it anyway and – thanks to the marvellous people who bought the book all over the world – it became an international bestseller.’ Carradine looked at the chairman, wondering how long he would allow her to continue. ‘I suppose it’s a question of bravery. A writer has to keep up her morale, her desire, her courage to tell the stories she wants to tell. For me it’s never been about prizes – although I’ve been lucky enough to have been nominated, sometimes even to win, many more times than I ever expected to – but rather it’s about keeping one’s spirits up, not getting too dejected, not feeling cross when yet another television adaptation of a period one knows inside-out keeps making basic errors of historical fact, time and again.’ Paget appeared briefly to have lost the thread of her argument. Sensing that the chairman was about to interrupt, she quickly picked it up. ‘Ultimately it’s about the readers,’ she said. ‘It’s about you. I never forget that.’

  Carradine looked out at the audience, half-hoping that Lara Bartok had slipped in at the last minute and was sitting in one of the rows towards the back. But of course she was nowhere to be seen. The chairman was directing a question at him. Carradine turned to listen. As he did so, he was distracted by a face in the crowd. Only three rows from the front, staring at him intently, was Sebastian Hulse.

  ‘Mr Carradine? Kit?’

  Carradine was momentarily rendered incapable of speech.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ he said. ‘Could you repeat that?’

  To a gasp from an irritated member of the audience, Paget repeated the question herself and began to answer it, only to be silenced by Carradine.

  ‘Oh yes, the movie business,’ he said. He had been asked about the process by which Equal and Opposite had been turned into a film. ‘Everything you hear about Hollywood is true. It’s beguiling, it’s ruthless, it’s exciting. There’s a lot of money flying around, some big egos, some very clever people. What people don’t tend to say about Hollywood is how hard they work and how good they are at their jobs. We tend to give the Americans a hard time, depict them as shallow and sentimental. That’s not the case – at least, no more than anywhere else. They don’t get credit where credit is due.’

  Carradine again looked over at Hulse. He had not intended to shape his answer in order to curry favour with the Agency, but the man in the bespoke linen suit looked suitably gratified. He had a smile on his face that might have been interpreted as encouraging and friendly, but which seemed to Carradine slightly forbidding. He recalled the way Hulse had laid on the charm in Blaine’s before more or less ignoring him as he was leaving.

  ‘Could I speak briefly about my experiences with the various adaptations of my novels?’ Paget asked. It was a rhetorical question. She had soon embarked on a lengthy critique of Sherlock and Doctor Who, before attacking the ‘deleterious effects’ of Simon Cowell on popular culture. Carradine scanned the room again. There was no sign of Bartok. The event ended shortly afterwards with a series of questions from the audience, most of which – to Paget’s palpable fury – were directed at Carradine. Both authors promised to sign copies of their n
ovels in the pop-up bookstore adjacent to the conference room. More than thirty people queued for Carradine, the last of whom were Patrick and Eleanor Lang, who told him that they were leaving Marrakech the following morning to return to Atalanta, their yacht in Rabat.

  ‘It was absurd the way that ghastly woman monopolised the conversation,’ said Eleanor as they walked outside into the furnace of the afternoon.

  ‘Unadulterated egomaniac,’ Patrick concurred. ‘I’ve known North Korean dictators who were less self-absorbed.’

  Carradine thanked them for buying the books and wished them a safe trip to Gibraltar, their next port-of-call. There were perhaps twenty or thirty people milling about outside the hotel in the searing afternoon heat. He wanted only to get back to the riad, to have something to eat and to swim in the pool. A line of taxis had queued on the road, the drivers arguing with one another for prominence in picking up passengers as they emerged from the hotel. A young Moroccan student approached Carradine and thanked him for the event. Carradine signed a French copy of Equal and Opposite which the student had thrust into his hands. He was about to hail a taxi when he spotted the Irish novelist, Michael McKenna, standing beneath a palm tree about twenty metres away. Perhaps they could share the ride home. McKenna was talking to a young European woman wearing Audrey Hepburn sunglasses and a cream-coloured headscarf. The scarf completely surrounded her face but not enough to disguise the fact that the woman was very beautiful. Carradine began to watch her. In order to make eye contact with the great Irish novelist, the woman removed her sunglasses and smiled at something McKenna had said.

  Carradine froze. McKenna was talking to Lara Bartok. Her face was unmistakable, right down to the slightly crooked front teeth. This was surely the woman in the powder-blue bikini with her arm around the waist of the bearded surfer. This was surely the woman from the photograph in the Guardian, the estranged ex-girlfriend of the late Ivan Simakov. Carradine fought the urge to go immediately towards her, to interrupt her conversation and to introduce himself, not as Kit or C.K. Carradine, but as ‘a friend of Robert Mantis’. Another student approached him, asking him to sign a book. Carradine did so, unable to take his eyes from Bartok. As he passed the book back to the student, McKenna gestured at one of the drivers and took a step towards the queue of taxis. Was this his opportunity?

  Carradine turned around, looking for Hulse in the crowds. The American was nowhere to be seen. Why had he come to the event only to disappear afterwards? Was his intention simply to unsettle Carradine or was he watching him? In the short time that it took Carradine to scan the crowds, both McKenna and Bartok had made their way to a taxi. McKenna held the back door open as Bartok eased inside.

  Without pausing to worry that he might be under Agency surveillance, Carradine whistled for a driver and walked towards the nearest of the taxis on the rank. A young Moroccan man in denim jeans and a Paris St Germain shirt greeted him with a cheery ‘Hello there, sir, where you go today?’ as Bartok’s cab pulled off the rank.

  ‘You see that taxi?’ he replied in French.

  ‘Yes, sir.’

  ‘Follow it.’

  21

  Carradine tracked McKenna’s taxi to the riad. Instructing his driver to hold back at a distance of about fifty metres, he watched as McKenna emerged from the front seat and opened the door for LASZLO. Like a celebrity ducking through a channel of fans and paparazzi, she hurried into the riad and quickly disappeared.

  Carradine paid the driver and jogged the short distance to the front door. He was embalmed in sweat, assaulted by the chaos and noise of late afternoon Marrakech. He walked past the reception desk and entered the main courtyard leading out towards the pool. It occurred to Carradine that Bartok might have gone to McKenna’s room; that they were already acquainted and that McKenna was passing her a message of some kind. Perhaps he was also working for Mantis? Perhaps they were lovers? The latter possibility seemed highly unlikely – McKenna was a bald, psoriatic Catholic homunculus in his early sixties who had been married to the same woman for forty years – but anything was possible when it came to the private lives of novelists.

  Carradine stopped in a short passage leading out to a patio in front of the pool. He could hear McKenna’s voice. Peering out at the gardens, he saw the Irishman sitting in a low wicker armchair at the edge of the swimming area, already deep in conversation with Bartok. Bartok herself was still wearing the cream-coloured veil and Hepburn sunglasses. A waiter had brought them a bottle of mineral water and two glasses. Hoping to catch Bartok’s eye, Carradine walked past their table, eavesdropping on the conversation as he stuck his hand in the shallow end of the pool, ostensibly testing the temperature of the water.

  ‘This is what is so interesting about your books.’ Her voice was exactly as Mantis had described: Ingrid Bergman speaking fluent, heavily accented English. ‘The ability to sustain a kind of political commitment in literature without losing sight of the essential part of storytelling which is the characters and the relationships and the way we live our lives, yes?’

  Bartok must have intuited that Carradine was staring at her because she looked up. He smiled back, trying to appear nonchalant. Bartok gave him a short nod of acknowledgement. He did not want her to be suspicious of him; he knew that she would be on guard against anyone who might have recognised her. Nor did he want to lose what would surely be his only opportunity to talk to her. Walking back past the table he looked down at McKenna and muttered: ‘Forgot my goggles’, a remark to which neither McKenna nor Bartok responded. On the other side of the tiled colonnade, Carradine then turned sharp left and walked towards the reception desk.

  There was a young Moroccan man on duty.

  ‘What can I do for you?’ he asked.

  Carradine’s heart was hammering. ‘I gave a package to one of your colleagues yesterday to put in the hotel safe,’ he said. ‘A large envelope. Can I get it out, please?’

  ‘Of course, sir. Do you have the receipt?’

  It was like the feeling of being prevented from boarding a train that was about to leave a station. Carradine explained that the receipt was in his room and that he would have to fetch it. He was desperately worried that in the time it took him to retrieve the piece of paper, Bartok would leave the riad.

  ‘In the meantime,’ he urged the receptionist, ‘if you could get the envelope. As quickly as possible. It’s very important.’

  Carradine rushed to his room, scampering through the riad. He unlocked the door, found his wallet and grabbed the receipt. Leaving the room, he looked out towards the pool to check that McKenna and Bartok were still talking. They were. He rushed back to reception.

  ‘Do you have it?’ he asked.

  ‘I do, sir,’ the receptionist replied.

  To Carradine’s relief, the package was on the desk. He was asked to sign for it. He did so and took the package back to his room.

  What to do next? He heard the sound of movement outside and pulled back the curtains. A maid was sweeping around the fountain on the far side of the courtyard. He picked up the package and wrote ‘LASZLO’ in large capital letters on the front. He then opened the door and gestured to the maid. She set her broom to one side and came towards him.

  ‘Oui, monsieur?’

  She was shy, almost wary of him. In his clearest French, Carradine asked if she would take the package to the woman sitting with Monsieur McKenna. She was to tell her that the guest in room five, the man who had forgotten his swimming goggles, had sent it.

  ‘Oui, monsieur. Quel est votre nom, monsieur?’

  ‘Je m’appelle Monsieur Carradine. Je suis l’un des écrivains au festival.’

  He was sure that if the maid did as he asked, Bartok would take the bait. Carradine tipped her fifty dirhams and sent her on her way.

  ‘Remember my name,’ he whispered in French as she walked off. ‘Carradine. Room Five.’

  He had line of sight to the table from a narrow doorway linking the courtyard to the colonnade around the pool.
He watched from the shadows as the maid headed for McKenna. After a moment’s hesitation, she interrupted their conversation, gestured in the direction of Carradine’s room and handed the package to ‘LASZLO’.

  Bartok immediately turned around. McKenna also looked in Carradine’s direction, placing a hand over his eyes to block out a shaft of sunlight. Carradine was sure that he could not be seen. He took a step further back in the shaded doorway as Bartok thanked the maid. She was about to put the package on the table when she saw what had been written on the front. Carradine could sense her shock from fifty feet. Yet he noticed that she controlled her reaction, placing the package face down on the table before continuing the conversation as if nothing had happened.

  Carradine waited. The maid came back and asked anxiously if she had given the envelope to the right person. He said that she had and gave her another fifty dirhams. Other guests came into the courtyard. Carradine wondered if he should go back to the pool and try to signal to Bartok when McKenna wasn’t looking. Far from being elated that he had found ‘Maria Rodriguez’, he was annoyed by the fact that he possessed neither the wherewithal to get her to do what he wanted her to do, nor the training to ensure that their meeting, should it ever take place, would go unobserved.

  Another fifteen minutes passed. Carradine hovered around in one of the lounges off the courtyard. He sat in a leather armchair with a view through a partly opened window towards Bartok’s table. At no point did she pick up the package nor show any interest in doing so. A third man joined the table. He was African but did not appear to be local: he was too well-dressed and carried himself with the easy confidence and swagger of a European or American. Bartok smiled at him warmly when the man sat down. Carradine hoped that he was not her boyfriend. Then the male receptionist who had fetched his package from the safe came into the lounge. Carradine pretended to be reading a magazine.