“The world will be watching,” Lyautey reminded him. “Newspaper men are everywhere.”
“Them!” Abd el-Krim said, a noise of dismissal.
“They are a tool, which a wise man uses like any other,” the Frenchman suggested. “In this century, international eyes are becoming a powerful force. Think of your compatriot, Raisuli, when he—”
“He is not my compatriot.”
“I understand. Even if those were not his men shooting at us just now, it has long been clear that Raisuli’s only loyalty is to Raisuli. But my point is, he well understands the value of the international press. He may enslave or murder lesser prisoners, but his kidnapping of Walter Harris bore the face of a gentleman’s affair. When he did the same with the Perdicaris family, he played the rage of the American president into a position of considerable authority. Even the Maclean kidnapping was friendly enough.”
“You wish me to follow the lesson of Raisuli?”
“He is a terrible man, I know, capable of the foulest of atrocities. But to the outside world, he takes pains to appear a brigand-hero.”
“It is a face some of his own believe as well,” the Moroccan admitted.
“A century and a half ago, Morocco was the first nation to recognise the United States of America. If you wish to see the reverse happen, to have America formally recognise the Rif Republic, you must take care to appear as gentlemen. Leaving a mountain of slaughtered Spaniards for the cameras is not the way to do that.”
Abd el-Krim tipped his head thoughtfully. “You speak almost as if you wish to see our rebellion succeed.”
“Officially, I regard you as in dispute with the Sultan of Morocco, the political and religious head of your state, for whom I am resident general and foreign minister. But, in fact, do I care if you defeat the Spanish to the north? Why should I? The French Protectorate has problems enough without having to take you troublesome Berbers in hand.”
It was beautifully judged: After a brief touch of outrage, the Moroccan burst into laughter.
As if the sound were an agreed-to signal, Ali picked up the tea-pot and dashed out the leaves. “If the Maréchal does not return,” he said to Abd el-Krim, “they will send soldiers after him.”
“And I must join my brother,” Abd el-Krim agreed. Still, he remained seated, watching Ali pack away the tea paraphernalia. “Today my brother has sent el-Raisuli an ultimatum,” he told Lyautey. “The Sherif is the only barrier to the north, now that we have removed the Spanish from Chaouen. My brother will wish to discuss what we are to do when the man turns us down.”
“I am told that Raisuli is ill. Too ill to travel, even.”
“Then we shall carry him.”
“Raisuli has no power left him, not in the face of the modern world.”
“Raisuli is a Sherif, descended from the Prophet, blessed be his name. While he has breath, Raisuli is a flag to be followed. And, he has a son who is old enough to call the tribes together.”
“A child,” Lyautey said sharply.
“Fifteen, sixteen years? A man. But before you protest, no, I have no intention of harming the boy, no more than I wish harm to the father. I have little respect for Raisuli, but I will respect his blood. As for the son, he is less than nothing. Without the father, he is empty.”
At that, the rebel leader got to his feet. Lyautey rose, too, moving stiffly as he stepped to one side of the fire, facing the shorter man. His spine went straight, then he bent and put his heels together, a formal salute. When he extended his hand, Abd el-Krim grasped the Frenchman’s fingers for a moment, then touched his fingertips to his lips in the Berber gesture of respect.
“Maréchal Lyautey, I shall ponder all that you have said.”
“I hope that we may meet again, under better circumstances,” Lyautey replied.
“Bismillah,” the Emir of the Rif Republic murmured, and turned to snug up the saddle on his horse.
Ali dug around in his saddle-bag, coming out with an ancient tube of ointment. He tossed it to Idir. “Put the salve onto the Maréchal’s horse,” he ordered the boy. Then to my surprise, he swung into the saddle, clearly intending to ride with Abd el-Krim.
“You’re not coming with us?” I asked—in Arabic, for the Emir’s sake.
“I am needed in the north.”
“But what about—”
“Mahmoud? I trust you will not rest until you find his boot-prints.”
Ali—trusting us? Impossible. “What do—”
I stopped, at a grip on my elbow: I was not seeing something, but Holmes was. I changed my protest into a question. “Where do you suggest we pick up our enquiries?”
“There are but two places to ask: the medina and the road where last Idir saw him.”
“We’ve asked. You have asked.”
Abd el-Krim spoke up. “Perhaps the wrong people were asked.”
I opened my mouth to snap at the inane remark—clearly we’d asked the wrong people; had we asked the correct people, we’d have found Mahmoud. But it was one of those drearily obvious statements that yet reverberate in the mind, and shift around, until it became: Perhaps the wrong people were asking.
It was crystal clear, the moment the thought occurred: In the intimate quarters of the medina, there could be few secrets. The dawn tremble of a web at Bab Bou Jeloud would ripple across the city, to arrive at Bab Guissa well before mid-day.
But no stranger’s eyes would notice it.
And it had been strangers who had been looking.
I looked up at Ali, perched in the high Moorish saddle. “We will find him.”
“Insh’Allah,” he said, his voice fervent, before wheeling his horse and kicking it into a gallop.
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
With three horses and four people, the natural distribution of weight would have put me and the child together. However, the Maréchal was meditating on his conversation with the rebel—his only remark had been, “Shrewd fellow, that”—and I wanted a private conversation with Holmes. So we started back along the narrow track with Lyautey in the lead, followed by Idir, with me perched behind Holmes, my arms around his waist.
The last time I could recall riding with Holmes on a horse, he had been barely conscious, while I was both thoroughly terrified and terrifyingly young. That had been 1919; this was (so I had been told) 1924. I was no longer his young apprentice. I was his wife.
I felt Holmes’ hand briefly on mine, as if he had shared the thought, and I pulled myself closer against my husband’s back.
“Why did you stop me from asking Ali about returning to Fez with us?” I asked him.
“I did not wish him forced to admit openly that he was standing surety with the Rifi. It’s all very well for a pair of gun-runners to come and go, but after one of them has been witness to a secret meeting? And permitted a would-be assassin to escape? By staying with Abd el-Krim, Ali comforts the leader’s mind.”
“I see.” Which meant that at that very moment, if Abd el-Krim had studied the back riding up the trail before him and decided Ali was not worthy of his trust, our friend could be lying on the ground with a bullet in his brain. With an effort, I pulled my mind off that image. “As to secrecy, it appears that both sides have a plenitude of spies.”
“All sides watch the others, always. The Spanish have eyes in the Sultan’s court, the French have ears in the Spanish headquarters, both slip money to men within the rebellion. And you can be certain that Abd el-Krim has men close to Raisuli as well as Lyautey.”
“Tell me about this Raisuli character.”
“Sherif Mulai Ahmed er Raisuni has spent a long career of cruelty and corruption. He began as a cattle thief. After spending four years chained to a dungeon wall, he blossomed into real brutality. He has tortured and beheaded, played the Spanish for all they are worth, taken various foreign visitors prisoner—men who considered themselves his friends, even after their experiences—and demanded huge ransoms.”
“The slogan ‘Perdicaris alive or Raisuli
dead’ re-elected President Roosevelt,” I remarked—and why would my memory cough up that bit of trivia?
“Voters do love the image of warships steaming to the rescue of an innocent. In point of fact, Perdicaris had rescinded his American citizenship. Plus, he was a wholehearted admirer of Raisuli—called him a patriot. And far from ‘Raisuli dead,’ the Sherif came out of it with $70,000 and—”
“Seventy thousand dollars?”
“And dual positions as district governor and pasha of Tangier. Brief positions; he was thrown out a year later because, as he put it, Europeans objected to a few heads stuck on the walls.”
“Raisuli seems to have studied at the feet of Sultan Moulay Ismaïl.”
“To whom he is related.”
“Ismaïl fathered nine hundred children—I’d imagine most of Morocco is related to him.”
“But most of the country would not claim to be its rightful Sultan.”
“Why haven’t Raisuli’s people quietly put him into a hole?” I grumbled.
It was the sort of question Holmes enjoyed, an opening to both knowledge and opinion: Raisuli as an upholder of the Faith, a Moroccan Robin Hood, in a land where brutality is expected and softness in a leader can be a fatal mistake. And yes, the same applied to that educated Berber gentleman who had just made us tea, the Emir Mohammed Abd el-Krim. As Holmes put it, “European soldiers have been known to commit suicide, rather than be taken prisoner by a Rifi.”
From the history of Sherif Raisuli, this husband of mine wandered off into the political hinterlands of our situation: the drive to war and Morocco’s long history of conflict; Arab and Berber; the conquest of Spain by Hannibal (a Berber). The building of Alhambra and Alcazar. Spain’s expulsion of the Moors, their return to the Rif mountains.
It had been a long day. My energies were at a low ebb, and the warmth of my companion’s back and the ceaseless rumble of his voice against my ear were soothing. I may not have followed all the details of his extended lecture, but I was not asleep. Although it did take a moment for his accusation to register.
“—and why do I go on when you are not listening?” he ended.
I sat up. “I am,” I protested. “To every word.”
“Then what was I saying?”
“You were talking about the six factions fighting over this one scrap of country,” I replied promptly. “Four of them are European: The French want peace and progress, the Spanish want revenge on the Moors, the Germans want iron, and the English want the status quo. Internally, there are two: Abd el-Krim wants a Republic, and Raisuli wants to be Sultan. And every faction has legal rights, a long history here, and a full complement of spies and informants. Did I miss anything?”
“Hmm. Mycroft, I suppose.”
“Mycroft is a nation unto himself.”
“True.”
“Holmes, have we today diverted even in the slightest the drive to war?”
“Oh, I shouldn’t think so,” he said. “The best any individual can hope for is to establish a degree of mutual respect between the principals.”
“In hopes that, when hell breaks loose, they remember they once shook hands?” I said dubiously.
“In hopes they remember that the other man was open to conversation.”
“Have you any reason to think Morocco will be more sensible than Palestine—or Europe?”
He did not reply. I shifted, to return circulation to my nether anatomy, then asked in a lower voice, “Holmes, what was that attack about?”
“Assassination.”
“Not abduction—or simple robbery?”
“The bullet missed the Resident General by inches. It was not a random shot.”
“How did they know where he would be?”
“More to the point, why did they choose here rather than one of a hundred other opportunities? The Maréchal does not exactly hide himself away.”
“Perhaps they’re unfamiliar with Fez?” I wondered.
“It’s possible. It does suggest that their information came from within the camp of Abd el-Krim, rather than Lyautey’s own.”
“I don’t know that I’d agree. It seems to me that any smart spy would take care not to use inside knowledge that could give him away.” Holmes gave a pleased nod, as if I had passed one of his little tests. “Though I agree, it’s probably a Rifi. Lyautey’s circle of intimates is small enough, he’d have spotted a spy long before this.”
“Not, as you say, if the man is sufficiently skilled. An effective spy is a man of the shadows. A person both seen and overlooked. Someone who knows much and says little. Those with information to sell are always such.”
“Sounds like Mahmoud.”
“Precisely.”
“Holmes! You don’t think—”
“That Mahmoud Hazr sells information? No. But he is missing, and someone set men to shoot at Lyautey. The two facts are related. We must find him.”
“How?”
His reply was oblique. “What were you thinking of, when Abd el-Krim suggested that we were asking the wrong people in Fez?”
“It occurred to me that yesterday, when you were making enquiries about Mahmoud, you were there as a foreigner. The Fez medina is a warren, all inter-connected and on top of itself. A beehive. I can’t believe that its people don’t know what’s going on in the next house.”
Interesting, that I knew this man well enough to tell thoughtful consideration from scepticism by the back of his neck.
“You propose that going undercover would result in information?” he asked after a time.
“I was thinking more of locating someone who had an ear in the market-place, who would yet speak freely with us.”
“And yet …”
When he did not complete his thought, I encouraged him with, “And yet what?”
He muttered an Arabic phrase that sounded like, A nugget of truth often sleeps, deep in a tangled web of lies.
“What a dreadfully mixed metaphor,” I complained. “Who said that?”
“I did.”
Interesting, too, that I knew this man well enough to be certain he would not answer further until he had chewed over all the possible considerations of whatever scenario I had inadvertently planted in his mind.
I sighed, and tried to make myself comfortable on the horse’s rump.
Afternoon wore on towards evening, and the narrow, wadi-side trail joined the wider track which led to the actual road. It was a relief, to have navigated the worst part of the journey before darkness made it life-threatening. It also meant that we no longer had to ride single-file.
To my surprise, rather than urge our mount up beside Lyautey, Holmes reined in and worked his off leg over the shaggy neck, dropping to the ground.
“What are you doing?” I asked. “Let me get up with Idir, if you think we’re too heavy for this beast.”
“I need to make a few changes to my garments. Better to do so now, that I might become accustomed to them.”
“What is going on?” the Maréchal asked before I could.
“Mahmoud Hazr is neither a common nor a vulnerable person,” Holmes explained, his hands busy pulling at his turban. “If he was abducted by motorcar on Thursday night, it means that someone provided information, and that several men were available to lay a trap. Witnesses will have noticed where the motor went. Russell has kindly pointed out the obvious to me, that a person may not see far into the shadows while he stands in a bright light. When I made enquiries about Mahmoud, I was standing beneath a spot-light. I shall take more care, as I repeat my questions outside of the city.”
“If you wish people questioned, I need only give an order,” Lyautey pointed out.
“And you will receive answers every bit as helpful as those I received.”
“Do you think so?”
“I know so.”
“What do you propose?”
“I propose to become a creature of the twilight. Beginning here and now.”
He meant it literally: His hands wer
e already at work, adjusting his turban to bear some subtle message I did not immediately see, patting the ground to transfer dust to his limbs and clothing, scuffing at his boots, cutting one boot-lace and knotting it, mended and frayed. It wasn’t until he had pulled a set of prayer beads from some inner recess that I was sure what he was after. With a sigh, I dug out the little pot of kohl and handed him that.
Lyautey remained baffled. “Cher cousin, what are you about?”
In response, Holmes began to recite, in flawless Arabic, an early Sura of the Qur’an, while his hands played over the worn beads.
“Is this why you haven’t shaved your beard?” I asked him.
He shifted into English. “Not specifically. I merely reflected that facial hair might come in useful. As often happens, I was correct.”
I shook my head, and turned to the Maréchal. “What do you see before you?”
“An Englishman in fancy dress.”
“But if you were motoring along and saw this figure beside the road saying his prayers, what would you think?”
The pale eyes grew wide: “A marabout!”
A holy man, one of Islam’s everyday saints: Educated or insane, a charlatan or a learned scholar of Qur’an and Hadith, a marabout could also be a wandering pilgrim. A less likely identity for Sherlock Holmes would be difficult to imagine. A nun perhaps. “You don’t need Idir, Holmes. I’ll go with you.”
“Russell, you must concentrate on Fez. You need to find the man who brought you to Miss Taylor—he might remember some detail about the motor. And perhaps those in the vicinity of the funduq have an idea what you and Mahmoud did, during those times when the boy was not with you. You have an advantage over me: Apart from one morning when you juggled a few oranges, there is no reason for the people there to remember your face, whereas Idir and I spent most of the day quartering the city, asking after Mahmoud.”
“But surely a mute child would be a fairly distinctive companion?” My protest was not about the child, but about the hard twinge of desperation I felt: I’d just got most of my life back, and now …
Holmes’ gentle response, too, was less argument than apology. “In the mountains, he may be known, but not in the bled, where even the Emir Mohammed bin Abd el-Krim can pass unrecognised.”
Garment of Shadows: A Novel of Suspense Featuring Mary Russell and Sherlock Holmes Page 16
