by Nick Carter
I sat down at the low round table and studied her. “Is everything all right?” I asked.
“I turned on the car radio on the way here,” she said in a monotone.
“Go on.”
“There was a brief news item from Tetuãn.”
My stomach tightened automatically. “What was it, Gabrielle?”
The green eyes looked up at me. “Georges Pierrot is dead.”
I stared at her, trying to grasp what she had said. It seemed impossible. I had left him just hours ago. “How?”
“The police found him hanging from a short rope in his garage. They are calling it suicide.”
“I’ll be damned.”
“I am very scared, Nick.”
Now I knew what the note had meant. I was just about to speak when the waiter came along, so I stopped and gave him our orders. Neither of us was very hungry, but I ordered two pots of Moroccan couscous with a light wine. When the waiter left, I took the note from my pocket.
“I think you ought to see this, Gabrielle,” I said, handing the paper to her. “I found it in my hotel room.”
Her eyes skipped across the message, and as they did so, a glaze of raw fear came into her eyes. She looked back at me.
“They are going to kill me too,” she said hollowly.
“Not if I have anything to say about it,” I assured her. “Look, I’m really sorry that you and Pierrot had to get mixed up in this. But that all happened before I got here. Now that they know about you, the only thing we can do is take special care that you don’t get hurt. You may have to move out of your apartment for a while until this blows over. I’ll register you in a hotel this evening.”
She had gotten control of herself now, and there was no more hysteria in her eyes. “My uncle fought these men because he knew they must be fought,” she said slowly. “I will not run away.”
“There’s no need for you to do any more than you’ve done already,” I told her. “I’m leaving Tangier soon to find the research lab. You’ll be alone, and the only thing you have to do is stay out of sight for a while.”
“Where is the facility?” she asked.
“I don’t know yet, but I think I know somebody who can tell me.”
We finished the meal in silence, left the restaurant, and got into my rented car. We drove through the ancient archway to the casbah, over the rough cobblestones, back down through the medina toward the French Quarter. But before we got out of the medina, we found trouble. I had been followed.
It was on a narrow, dark street, away from the shops and people. We were almost at the Old City gates when it happened. A boy came up the street from the opposite direction pulling an empty handcart, the kind used for luggage by the hotel porters. There was plenty of room for us to pass, but suddenly he veered the cart sidewise in front of us, blocking the street. Then he ran into the shadows.
I jammed on the brakes and jumped from the car to yell after the boy. In the next instant a shot barked out in the night from a nearby balcony. The slug ripped into the roof of the car beside my left arm and spent itself somewhere inside. I heard Gabrielle give a sharp little yell of fright.
I ducked to one knee, going for the Luger as my eyes sought the blackness of the balcony. I saw a shadow move. A second shot rang out and tore at the sleeve of my jacket, smashing window glass in the car beside me. I returned fire with the Luger but did not hit anything.
“Get down!” I yelled at Gabrielle.
Just as she obeyed, a shot exploded in the night from the opposite side of the street. The slug ripped through the windshield of the Fiat and missed Gabrielle’s head by inches. If she had been sitting upright, it would have killed her.
I fired back toward the sound of the shot, then swung back behind the open door of the car. I heard a voice shout loudly in Arabic, calling to someone behind us. They had laid a trap for us and had us boxed in.
“Keep down!” I yelled to the girl again. I climbed back into the driver’s seat just as another shot was fired from the balcony and shattered the glass of the driver’s window.
I crouched low on the seat, holding onto the Luger all the while, and started the car. Another shot came from the opposite side of the street, and I could see that the gunman was in a doorway. But Gabrielle was between us. I ripped the gears as I shifted into reverse, and with both of us ducked down low in the front seat, I roared backwards down the narrow street.
The figures came out of the deep shadows and fired openly at us as we moved away. Two more shots shattered the windshield as I tried to keep the car from running into a building. I reached out the vent window with the Luger and returned fire. I saw the man who had jumped from the balcony to the street go down holding his right leg.
“Look out, Nick!” Gabrielle yelled.
I turned and saw a man in the middle of the street, aiming a gun at my head through the rear window. I ducked lower as he fired and the slug shattered both the rear window and the windshield.
Then I stepped hard on the accelerator. The sports car jumped backward. The gunman tried to get out of its way, but I followed him. The car hit him with a thump, and I saw him fly over the left side of the Fiat and hit the pavement against the side of a building. We reached a small intersection, and I backed into it, then slipped the Fiat into first and shot away toward the bright lights of the French Quarter. We drove onto Rue de la Liberty, the Fiat limping on a flat tire, its glass spider-webbed with cracks and holes. I pulled over to the curb and looked at Gabrielle to see if she was all right.
“I see you came through it,” I said, giving her a reassuring grin.
I thought she would be scared speechless, considering her reaction earlier to the killing of Pierrot, but she was looking at me clear-eyed and calm.
She reached over and placed a gentle kiss on my lips. “That’s for saving my life.”
I said nothing. I got out of the battered car and went around and helped her out. Curious passersby were already pausing to look at the Fiat, and I guessed the police would be in the area very soon. I took Gabrielle’s arm and rushed her around a corner and onto the Rue Amerique du Sud. In the shadow of a sapling, I stopped and pulled her close to me.
“This is for being a good sport about everything,” I said. Then I kissed her. She responded completely, pressing her body close against me and exploring my mouth with her tongue. When it was over, she just stood there looking up at me, her breath coming shallow. “That was very nice, Nick.”
“Yes,” I said. Then I took her hand. “Come on, we have to find you a place to stay tonight.”
FIVE
We walked a complicated route through the French Quarter, and when I was sure we were not being followed, I settled Gabrielle into a small hotel called the Mamora, not far from the Velasquez Palace. Then I kept my appointment with Colin Pryor.
The cafe we met at was not heavily visited by tourists, although located on the Boulevard Mohammed V. There was a single row of tables jammed up against the outside of the building to avoid the heavy evening pedestrian traffic. Colin Pryor was already there when I arrived.
I joined Pryor with just a mutual nod of our heads. We had met previously, in Johannesburg, but he looked heavier and out of shape now. He was a squarish Briton who might have been a champion soccer player.
“Good to see you again, Carter,” he said after we had ordered tea from a harried waiter.
I patched the crowd before us in their djellabas and fezzes and veils. “How are they treating you?” I asked.
“They keep me hopping, old boy. And the pay’s the same.”
“Same here.”
It was a perfect place for a meeting. The noise from the crowd drowned out our voices to anybody but each other, and since complete strangers sat at tables together because of a lack of chairs, there was no good reason for an observer to conclude that we knew each other.
I spent the first ten minutes telling Pryor how I almost got killed a couple of times in a couple of hours. He already knew about
Delacroix and Pierrot. There was little he could add to my own meager store of information.
“What do you know about the Moroccan general staff?” I asked next.
“Not a great deal. What do the generals have to do with the Omega project?”
“Maybe very little. But Delacroix thought there might be a tie-in.”
“The army leaders are hiding under their desks at present, hoping the king doesn’t decide to bring charges against them. He believes there are still traitors in the army who plan to overthrow him.”
“Has he given Djenina a clean slate?”
Pryor shrugged. “Ostensibly. Djenina was at the state reception where the previous coup attempt was made. A bloody affair. Djenina killed several of his colleagues and helped prevent the coup, they Bay.”
I mused “Before or after he saw how badly it was going for them?”
“Good point. But so far, Djenina is in the clear. He and General Abdallah.”
That was the other name Pierrot had mentioned. “Abdallah was at this reception, too?”
“Yes. He shot a fellow officer in the face.”
I grunted. “Delacroix believed that Djenina was one of the conspirators in the first coup and that he’s now planning a second one.”
“He bloody well might. But what does this have to do with your problem, old boy?”
“Djenina has been seen at the research lab with the leaders there. It’s possible that Djenina is scratching the backs of the Chinese so that they’ll scratch his. I understand Djenina commands from Fez.”
“Yes, he does.”
“Does he live off the military base?”
“He’s furnished a place on the base, I believe,” Pryor said. “But he’s never there. He has a fancy estate up in the mountains, near El Hajeb. Keeps a cadre of troops to guard the place. It’s rumored that Hassan is going to take his personal guard away from him, but it hasn’t happened yet.”
“How would I find his place?”
Pryor looked at me quizzically. “You’re not going there, old chap?”
“I have to. Djenina is my only contact with the lab. He’s been there and knows its exact location. If Djenina has any records about his association with the Chinese, I think he would keep them at his home. They just might give me a clue as to where the site is located. Or Djenina himself might.”
“Are you planning a burglary?” Pryor asked.
“That seems easier than deception, under the circumstances.”
His eyebrows raised. “Well, you’ll need luck, old boy. The place is a veritable fortress.”
“I’ve been in fortresses before,” I said. Pryor began drawing on a napkin, and I watched him. In a moment he was finished.
“This will get you to the general’s estate. It’s not much of a map, but it should give you a fair idea.”
“Thanks,” I said, tucking the napkin into a pocket. I finished my tea and prepared to get up.
“Carter, old man.”
“Yes?”
“This is a big one, isn’t it?”
“Damned big.”
He grimaced. His square-jawed face was somber. “Well, take care,” he said. “What I mean to say is, we’d hate to lose you.”
“Thanks.”
“And if you need me any time, just whistle.”
“I’ll keep that in mind, Pryor. And thanks.”
When I left Pryor, I decided to check in on Gabrielle, to see that everything was all right. I made sure I was not being tailed, then went to her hotel. It took her several minutes to answer the door, and she listened carefully to my voice before she opened it. When I saw her, I must have stared for a moment. She was wearing a sheer peignoir, a pale green that brought out the color of her eyes, and her red hair was streaming over her almost-bare shoulders. The cloth revealed a lot of Gabrielle underneath.
“I must have gotten you out of bed,” I said. “I’m sorry, I just wanted to see that you were settled in.” I wondered, even as I spoke the words, whether that was my only reason for being there.
“I am very glad you came back, Nick. I had not gone to bed yet. Please come in.”
I stepped into the room, and she closed and locked the door behind me. “I had a bottle of cognac sent up,” she said. “Would you like a glass?”
“No, thanks, I won’t be long. I wanted to tell you that I’m going up into the hills tomorrow, near Fez, to locate the general who knows where the lab is.”
“Djenina commands that area. Is it him?”
I sighed. “Yes, and now you know more than you should. I don’t want you to become any more involved, Gabrielle.”
She sat down on the edge of the double bed and pulled me down beside her. “I’m sorry I guessed, Nick. But, you see, I want to be involved. I want to make them pay for my uncle’s death. It is very important to me to help.”
“You have helped,” I told her.
“But I can do more, much more. Do you speak the Almohad dialect?”
“Straight Arabic is tough enough for me.”
“Then you need me,” she reasoned. “The general’s guards are Almohads from the High Atlas. Might it not be important to be able to communicate with them in their own language?”
I was going to give her a quick “no” but thought better of it. “Are you familiar with the area around El Hajeb?” I asked.
“I was raised around there,” she said with a broad, disarming smile. “I went to school in Fez as a child.”
I took the map from my pocket. “Does any of this look familiar to you?”
She studied the map silently for a long moment. “This map tells how to get to the old caliph’s palace. Is this where Djenina is living?”
“That’s what I’m told.”
“My family used to go there every Sunday.” She beamed smugly. “The place was open to the public for a while, as a museum. I know it well.”
“You’re familiar with the interior?”
“Every room.”
I returned the broad smile. “You’ve just bought yourself a ticket to Fez.”
“Oh, Nick!” She threw her long white arms around me.
I touched a curve of soft flesh under the sheer cloth when she kissed me, and the touch seemed to set her afire. She pressed more closely against me, inviting further exploration with her hand, as her lips moved on mine.
I did not disappoint her. When the kiss was over, she was trembling. I got up from the bed and snapped the light off, leaving the room in dim shadow. When I turned back to Gabrielle, she was slipping the peignoir off her shoulders. I watched the liquid movement. She was a voluptuous girl. “Take your clothes off, Nick.” I smiled in the dark. “Anything to oblige.” She helped me, her body brushing against me as she moved. In a moment, we were locked in another embrace, standing, her long thighs and full hips pressed against me.
“I want you,” she said so softly I could hardly hear the words.
I picked her up, carried her to the big bed, laid her down on it, and studied the soft, light body against the bedcovers. Then I moved onto the double bed beside her.
Later Gabrielle fell asleep in my arms, like a baby. After lying there with her beside me for a while, thinking of Djenina and Li Yuen and Damon Zeno, I finally slipped away from her, dressed, and left the room silently.
SIX
The next day we drove through the hills and mountains of northern Morocco to Fez and El Hajeb. We were in Gabrielle’s Citrõen DS-21 Pallas, a high-performance luxury car that hugged the mountain curves well. I drove most of the way because time was important to us and I could push the Citrõen harder.
For the most part it was dry, rocky country we went through. The scrawny greenery clung to the harsh terrain with a fierce determination to survive that was matched only by the Berbers who eked out a kind of living from the mountain rock. Goatherds stood tending flocks in lonely fields, and farmers were wrapped completely in their brown djellabas so that a passerby could not see their faces. Women sold grapes by the side of the
road.
We drove directly to the mountain village of El Hajeb. It looked a thousand years old, the crowded-together houses of the medina showing crumbling, ancient brick. We found a small cafe where we took our chances on a lamb kebab lunch with a local wine. Gabrielle had a glass of tea afterward, and it turned out to be a frothy mixture of hot milk and weak tea, which she sipped and then left.
We got the map out and started off again into the mountains. This time we had to leave the main road and drive over some very primitive paths. They were rocky and bumpy, with craggy outcroppings of rock surrounding us at times. As we rounded a curve onto a green plateau, we saw the, estate.
“That’s it, Nick,” Gabrielle said. “It used to be called the Caliph Hammadi Palace.”
I pulled the Citrõen over toward a clump of trees at the side of the road. I did not want the guards spotting us just yet. The old palace was very large. Made of brick and stucco, it was all arches, wrought-iron gates, and balconies, with mosaic tile decorating the facade. It was an appropriate home for a very powerful man.
Around the palace were gardens that extended for about a hundred yards in a wide perimeter. This garden area was enclosed by a high iron fence. There was a big gate on a drive that led into the grounds, and I could see a guard in a military uniform on duty.
“So that’s where Djenina hangs out,” I said. “It makes a nice summer cottage, doesn’t it?”
Gabrielle smiled. “Generals are important in this country, despite the recent uprising.” This one is more important than anyone on his staff imagines.”
