“What will you do?”
Bartok hesitated. “I do not know.”
As strong and resourceful as she was, in that moment she looked vulnerable. Carradine felt a duty of care toward her, a responsibility to protect her from the danger outside.
“Lara, if you walk out of this hotel, you’ll be assassinated. The Russians know you’re in Marrakech. Now the Agency will suspect I’m involved with you in some way.…”
“You are involved with me in some way!” she said, trying to make light of it.
“You know what I mean.”
The BBC headlines were counting down on the hour. Carradine turned to the television, expecting the same anchorman, the same news, the same guests. He was about to switch channels when he saw that a story was breaking.
“Gunmen associated with Resurrection have seized control of Poland’s parliament building in central Warsaw.…”
“Jesus Christ,” he said.
Bartok stepped toward the television in a state of consternation. The anchorman continued:
“As many as three hundred men, women and children are being held hostage inside the Sejm building. Gunshots have been fired and Polish police are reporting a number of fatalities. We join Peter Hackford, who is live at the scene.…”
They watched in silence as the reporter explained that as many as sixteen Resurrection gunmen had managed to shoot their way past security guards and take control of the Parliament building. Carradine was as fascinated by Bartok’s response to the unfolding story as he was by the scale of the attack. She knew, as he did, that nothing like this had ever been attempted by Resurrection before. To go after a nationalist government in the heart of Europe, shooting to kill with little chance of personal survival when the siege ended, marked a sea change in the evolution of Resurrection, perhaps even the death throes of what had metastasized into a violent cult. This was no longer a group of idealistic center-left activists kidnapping journalists or tipping tables of food and wine into the laps of extremist politicians. This was terrorism, pure and simple.
“The movement is dead,” said Bartok. “They have stolen it.”
“Who has?” Carradine asked, but saw that she was in no mood to answer. LASZLO was sitting on the edge of the bed, shaking her head in disbelief.
“Why do they continue to come for me when this is happening?” she said. “Why do they still care?”
“I don’t know,” Carradine replied.
He had no means of helping her. She was trapped and surrounded, just as the gunmen inside the Sejm were enclosed by those who were determined to bring them to justice. Carradine was merely an ordinary citizen with ordinary powers. When it came to helping Bartok, he knew that he was in over his head.
“I need to leave,” she said, picking up on this moment of self-doubt.
“Leave to go where?”
“Don’t worry,” she said. “I have ways of escape.”
“What sort of ways?”
“A driver. Someone I trust. He can get me to Tangier. I can catch a boat.”
“How are you going to do that? The Moroccans have eyes everywhere. They’ll be watching the ports, the train stations, the airports. The Agency asks them to find you and bring you in, they will find you and bring you in.”
“Why would they involve the Moroccans?” It was as though Bartok thought that Carradine was now exaggerating the threat against her. “I have been here three months, never had any trouble.”
“It’s a risk,” he said.
“This is the nature of my life,” she replied matter-of-factly. “I could be arrested at any time.”
Carradine thought more carefully about the driver.
“Let’s say you get to Tangier. How will you get out on the ferry? You said the new passport was useless.”
“I have another passport.”
“With you now?”
“No,” she replied. Bartok was carrying a small shoulder bag. “Not with me now. At my apartment.”
“You have a place here in Marrakech?”
“In Gueliz, yes.”
He was amazed by this. How had she managed to rent an apartment without detection?
“What’s the name on the passport?”
“Why?”
Bartok seemed impatient with Carradine for asking so many questions, but a plan had coalesced in his mind. The feeling was not dissimilar to those moments in his life as a writer when an ingenious plot device, born of creative necessity, materializes out of thin air. Carradine suddenly knew how to help her.
“Just tell me.”
“The name in the passport is Lilia Hudak.”
“Is it Hungarian?”
“Yes. Why? What is it, Kits?”
“Kit. No ‘s,’” he said.
“Kit, then!”
All Carradine needed was the driver and a slice of luck.
“I think I can get you out of Morocco another way,” he said. “A safer way. What’s the address of this apartment?”
26
Carradine ordered some food for Bartok on room service and waited for it to be delivered before going out alone into the Kasbah. It was just after nine o’clock. He walked the short distance to the Royal Mansour Hotel, asking for Patrick and Eleanor at the reception desk. They had already finished dinner and sent a message that Carradine should join them in the bar.
The Langs were taken aback by his suggestion at first but it did not take him long to persuade them. The key was his Hungarian girlfriend’s love of the sea and the once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to surprise her and sail up the coast of Morocco. He would have been crazy not at least to ask if it would be possible to join them on their yacht for a couple of nights; maybe the extra pairs of hands might also make the journey up to Gibraltar a little bit easier?
Eleanor was the first to warm to the idea, telling Patrick it would be fun to spend a couple of nights at sea with a “famous novelist” and to get to know his “lovely young lady” in the bargain. Patrick couldn’t remember Carradine mentioning her in the restaurant, but when he saw the passport-sized photograph Carradine kept of “Lilia” in his wallet, the old man’s eyes lit up and he said he couldn’t see any reason in the world why the trip wouldn’t work. Carradine bought a second round of drinks to celebrate and they spent the rest of the conversation talking about the siege in Warsaw.
“What times we live in,” said Patrick. “Used to be that you knew who the enemy was. The maniacs who hijacked airplanes, drove trucks through crowds, blew themselves up on the Tube. They were identifiable. Nowadays the terrorists look just like you and me—or your nice girlfriend, Kit. Ordinary people bearing a grudge.”
“You mean white people,” said Eleanor archly.
Patrick didn’t bother denying it.
“I suppose I do,” he said. “I can’t pretend I haven’t worried about Resurrection myself. I’ve got money offshore. I voted Conservative. I think Brexit, by and large, will be a good thing for Europe in the long term. Apparently that makes me an enemy of the people. I could be kneecapped. Our house in Ramsgate could be burned down. These people are callous.” Patrick took a sip of his Chablis. “Resurrection isn’t about change. It’s about hate. Hatred of the rich. Hatred of those in power. They’re just thugs. We might get to Rabat and find they’ve put a hole in Atalanta and she’s at the bottom of the marina.”
“Let’s hope not!” said Carradine, trying to sound cheerful.
“At least we’re insured,” Eleanor muttered.
By the time his hosts were ready to call it a night, they had given Carradine instructions on where and when to meet them and asked only that he and Lilia both buy a pair of suitable shoes for the boat.
“No high heels!” Patrick called out as they parted company in the hotel lobby.
“I’ll throw mine away then,” Carradine replied.
* * *
He had one more task: to collect the Lilia Hudak passport from Bartok’s apartment and to fill a bag with her belongings.
; There was a taxi idling on the road at the western perimeter of the Mansour. Young couples on rugs were necking in the long grass, escaping the summer heat of their homes—and doubtless the prying eyes of parents. Carradine arranged a price for the journey into Gueliz, giving the driver the address of a restaurant two blocks south of Bartok’s apartment.
The journey took more than half an hour in thick traffic, following a route almost identical to the one Carradine had taken on foot the previous evening from Jemaa el-Fna. Stepping out of the cab at the northern end of Avenue Mohammed V, he realized that he had been dropped off within a stone’s throw of the café where he had spoken to Oubakir. Though his circumstances had changed irreversibly since then, Carradine was still fully absorbed in the role of a support agent; he had simply shifted his loyalty to Bartok so that he could continue to ply his trade in the secret world.
At no point had it occurred to him to stop and to think and to wonder if he should stay in the game; he wanted to help Bartok and to outwit Hulse. The particular characteristics of espionage—the absorption in a clandestine role; the opiate of secrecy; the adrenalized fear of being caught—were drugs to which Carradine had very quickly become addicted. At the Mansour, for example, he had deliberately wedged his mobile phone beneath the cushions of his armchair, to be collected later from the bar, so that he would hobble any technical surveillance the Agency might throw at him. Walking in loops around Bartok’s street, he employed the tradecraft he had used in his novels to ascertain if he was being followed. Using reflective surfaces in shop windows, even the wing mirrors on cars, Carradine ran anti-surveillance for several blocks, finding the streets too dark, his natural walking pace too fast and the mirrors too small to enjoy any degree of success. He remembered a spy in his second novel stopping on a busy London street and pretending to answer a mobile phone call so that she could turn three hundred and sixty degrees and make a full assessment of her surroundings. Carradine did not have his phone, but came to a halt nonetheless and looked back down the length of Rue Ibn Aïcha, peering this way and that with a frown and a squint, playing the part of a confused English tourist who had lost his way in the switchback streets of Gueliz. He saw nothing to make him suspicious.
After almost twenty minutes of this, he played the last card in the amateur spy’s pack, making a sharp left-hand turn into a quiet residential street and coming to an immediate halt. He counted to ten, then turned around and set off in the direction from which he had come, hoping to bump into anybody who might conceivably have been tailing him. The street was deserted. No pedestrians were coming toward him, no vehicles were loitering on the corner or drifting past at a crawl. Carradine was as sure as he was ever going to be that he had reached Bartok’s neighborhood undetected.
Her apartment was on Rue Moulay Ali, a wide residential street with a faux-Spanish restaurant at the northern end. Carradine passed a coffeehouse that was closing down for the night, a damaged strobe light flickering on the street. Bartok had explained that the entrance was about halfway down the road beside a plane tree sprouting from the pavement, its buckled trunk partly blocking access to the door. Carradine spotted the tree and, having checked up and down the road for surveillance, took out Bartok’s keys and unlocked the door.
It was pitch-dark inside the lobby. He gave his eyes time to adjust to the gloom, gradually picking out a row of steel letterboxes on the opposite wall. Moving with zombie slowness, a fumbling hand stretched out in front of his face, Carradine eventually located a timer switch and pressed it with his thumb.
Light flooded the lobby. There were pieces of crumpled newspaper and dust all over the floor. A pot plant had toppled over, spilling earth in dried clumps. Bartok had warned him that the lift was temperamental so Carradine took the stairs. Two-thirds of the way up, the lights timed out and he was again forced to fumble in the darkness, his heart pounding with the effort of climbing the stairs and the fear of being caught. He managed to find a plastic switch in the pitch-black and was able to walk up the remaining flights to Bartok’s door, his route illuminated by a series of weak staircase bulbs.
It was a small, stuffy apartment. Carradine was hit by a smell of stale tobacco and unwashed socks. A Berber rug had been tacked to the wall next to a poster of Ziggy Stardust. The kitchen was set to one side of the living room in an open-plan style not dissimilar to the flat in Lisson Grove. A set of French windows led out onto a narrow terrace. Bartok had rolled up a yoga mat and placed it underneath a large wooden coffee table in the center of the room.
Carradine closed the door behind him and switched on the air-conditioning. The room quickly became cooler and the stale smells of sweat and tobacco partially lifted. Every available surface was scattered with books, newspapers and magazines. He spotted some cigarette papers and a small block of hashish on the coffee table. A half-finished bottle of Grey Goose vodka had been left on a shelf in the kitchen. Carradine took a shot for his nerves then went to the cupboard under the sink and reached for the bag of dishwasher salt. It was exactly where Bartok had said it would be, nestled behind a box of soap powder and a plastic bucket full of cleaning products. He untied the knot on the bag and felt inside. He plunged his hand into the salt and felt the hard outline of the passport. He took it out, checked the name—“Lilia Hudak”—and put it in his back pocket.
Bartok had given him a list of other items to pack. His heart pounding, Carradine went into her bedroom. He was amused by the mess. The bed was unmade and there were books and items of clothing strewn all over the floor. It was as if a tribe of monkeys had been set loose in the room. A small, stained-glass window in the corner fed an eerie technicolor light into the bedroom. Carradine pulled down a soft bag from an overhead cupboard and set it on the bed. He found a drawer full of clean T-shirts and stuffed half a dozen of them into the bag along with two summer dresses from the wardrobe, a pair of denim shorts and some underwear. He was amazed by the number of clothes she owned.
Bartok had told him about the shampoo bottle beside the bed. He found the bottle, removed the lid and tapped out a tin-plate cigar tube. He unscrewed the cap. The tube was filled with hundred dollar bills. Carradine put it back inside the bottle and threw the shampoo into the bag.
Next he looked under the bed and located the pile of Russian novels Bartok had described, each of them translated into Hungarian. He identified Anna Karenina thanks to a picture of Keira Knightley on the front cover looking wan and indecisive. He opened it up. The SIM card was taped to the inside back cover. Carradine placed the book in the bag. There was a laptop and an old mobile phone on a shelf beside the window. Bartok had asked him to leave them behind. Unable to remember what shoes she had been wearing, Carradine picked up a pair of trainers and stuffed them into the bag, mindful of Patrick’s instructions for the yacht. Finally, he found the one item Bartok had insisted that he remember: an Art Deco silver bookmark given to her by her late mother. He wrapped it up in a pair of black knickers and placed both carefully inside one of the shoes to protect the bookmark from damage. Then he zipped up the bag and went out into the living room.
The man was standing beside the front door. His arms were folded, his legs slightly apart. Carradine was so shocked that he lurched backwards and had to steady himself on the frame of the door. The man was wearing jeans and a black T-shirt. He was slim and looked about thirty-five.
“You must be the writer.” He had a thin voice but with a distinct Russian accent. “Mister Considines.”
Carradine did not bother correcting him. Instead he said: “Who the fuck are you?”
Fear boiled inside him. Suddenly he was no longer in an adventure story of his own making, a work of imagination from which he could extricate himself at any time. He was in the center of Marrakech in the dead of night faced with a man who had been waiting for Lara Bartok. He knew where she lived. He knew that Carradine was associated with her. The game was up.
“Do not concern yourself with who I am. What are you doing here, please?” The man glance
d at the bag. “You make a vacation?”
“That’s right.” Carradine’s throat was as dry as coal. He looked in the direction of the second bedroom. He assumed that the Russian had been waiting there, though it was possible that he had picked the lock and walked right in. Had he searched Bartok’s room? Did that account for the mess? He wondered if there were other men in the apartment or a team waiting on the stairs. He had been so sure that he had not been followed.
“Who is the bag for, please?”
“My girlfriend,” Carradine replied. He knew that he had to play the innocent, to try to find a way of leaving the apartment without exposing Lara or himself to further danger. He could not think of any way of doing that without playing the role of an ordinary man caught up in a conspiracy that he did not understand. “How did you know my name?” he asked.
The Russian ignored him. He was not a physically imposing person, nor particularly sinister to look at. He might have been the landlord popping in to check up that everything was fine with the apartment. He had no gun—at least not one that Carradine had seen—but his manner was very calm and controlled.
“Where is the girl?” he asked. “Where is Lara Bartok?”
Carradine played the innocent. “Lara Bartok?”
“Your girlfriend. This is her place. Where is she, please?”
“My girlfriend’s name is Sandy.” Carradine plucked the first name that came into his mind. “She’s in hospital. She’s not well. She asked me to pack her a bag.”
“Which hospital?”
The question brought an acid surge into Carradine’s throat: he was out of his depth, untrained and untested, making things up out of thin air.
“I don’t know the name,” he said. “I just know where it is. Near the Medina. The one all the tourists go to.” He took a further risk, assuming that every city had one: “The American Hospital.”
The Russian nodded. Perhaps Carradine had miraculously stumbled on a version of the truth.
The Moroccan Girl Page 17
