by Hugh Laurie
Casablanca is fat, sprawling, and industrial; a city of concrete-dust and diesel fumes, where sunlight seems to bleach out colour, instead of pouring it in. It hasn't a sight worth seeing, unless half-a-million poor people struggling to stay alive in a shanty-town warren of cardboard and corrugated iron is what makes you want to pack a bag and jump on a plane. As far as I know, it hasn't even got a museum.
You may be getting the idea that I don't like Casablanca. You may be feeling that I'm trying to talk you out of it, or make your mind up for you; but it really isn't my place to do that. It's just that, if you're anything like me - and your entire life has been spent watching the door of whatever bar, cafe, pub, hotel, or dentist's surgery you happen to be sitting in, in the hope that Ingrid Bergman will come wafting through in a cream frock, and look straight at you, and blush, and heave her bosom about the place in a way that says thank God, life does have some meaning after all - if any of that strikes a chord with you, then Casablanca is going to be a big fucking disappointment.
We had divided ourselves into two teams. Fair skin, and olive skin.
Francisco, Latifa, Benjamin and Hugo were the Olives, while Bernhard, Cyrus and I made up the Fairs.
This may sound unfashionable. Even shocking. Perhaps you were busy imagining that terrorist organisations are equal opportunities employers, and that distinctions based on skin colour simply have no place in our work. Well, in an ideal world, perhaps, that's how terrorists would be. But in Casablanca, things are different.
You cannot walk the streets of Casablanca with fair skin.
Or, at least, you can, but only if you're prepared to do it at the head of a crowd of fifty scampering children, who call, and shout, and point, and laugh, and try and sell you American dollars, good price, best price, and hashish likewise.
If you're a tourist with fair skin, you take this as it comes.
Obviously. You smile back, and shake your head, and say la, shokran — which causes even more laughter, and shouting, and pointing, which in turn causes another fifty children to come and follow your pied pipe, all of whom, strangely, have also got the best price for American dollars - and, generally, you do your best to enjoy the experience. After all, you're a visitor, you look strange and exotic, you're probably wearing shorts and a ridiculous Hawaiian shirt, so why the hell shouldn't they point at you? Why shouldn't a fifty yard journey to the tobacconist's take three-quarters of an hour, and stop traffic in all directions, and just about make the late editions of the Moroccan evening papers? This is why you went abroad, after all. To be abroad.
That's if you're a tourist.
If, on the other hand, you went abroad in order to take over an American consulate building with automatic weapons, so that you could hold the consul and his staff to ransom, demand ten million dollars and the immediate release of two hundred and thirty prisoners of conscience, and then leave by private jet, having mined the building with sixty kilos of C4 plastic explosive - if that's what you nearly put in the Purpose Of Visit box on the immigration form but didn't, because you're a highly-trained professional who doesn't make slips like that - then frankly you can do without the staring and pointing stuff from kids on the street.
So the Olives were to work the surveillance, while the Fairs prepared for the assault.
We had taken over an abandoned school building in the Hay Mohammedia district. It might once have been a classy, grassy suburb, but not any more. The grass had long since been laid over by the corrugated iron house-builders, the drains were ditches by the side of the road, and the road was something that might get built eventually. Inshallah.
This was a poor place, full of poor people, where food was bad and scarce, and fresh water was something that old people told their grandchildren about on long winter evenings. Not that there were many old people in Hay Mohammedia. Here, the part of an old person was usually played by a forty-five year old with no teeth, courtesy of the achingly-sweet mint tea that stood in for a standard of living.
The school was a large building. Two storeys high on three sides, built round a cement courtyard, where children must once have played football, or said prayers, or had lessons in how to bother Europeans; and round the outside there was a fifteen foot wall, broken only by a single, iron-sheeted gate that led into the courtyard.
It was a place where we could plan, and train, and relax.
And have violent arguments with each other.
They began as small, trifling things. Sudden irritations over smoking, and who had the last of the coffee, and who's going to sit in the front of the Land Rover today. But they seemed, gradually, to be getting worse.
At first, I put them down to straightforward nerves, because the game we were playing here was bigger, much bigger, than anything we'd tried so far. It made Murren seem like a piece of cake, without marzipan.
The marzipan in Casablanca was the police, and maybe they had something to do with the increasing tension, and the sulks, and the arguments. Because they were everywhere. They came in dozens of shapes and sizes, with dozens of different uniforms that signified dozens of different powers and authorities, most of which boiled down to the fact that, if you so much as glanced at them in a way they didn't like, they could fuck up your life for ever.
At the entrance to every police station in Casablanca, for example, stood two men with machine pistols.
Two men. Machine pistols. Why?
You could stand there all day, and you could watch these men as they conspicuously caught not one criminal, quelled not one riot, beat off not one invasion by a hostile foreign power - did not do, in fact, one thing that made the average Moroccan's life better in any way.
Of course, whoever decided to spend the money on these men - whoever decreed that their uniforms should be designed by a Milanese fashion-house, and that their sunglasses should be of the wrap-around type - would probably say 'well of course we haven't been invaded, because we have two men outside every police station with machine pistols and shirts that are two sizes too small for them'. And you'd have to bow your head and leave the office, walking backwards, because there's no dealing with logic like that.
The Moroccan police are an expression of the state. Picture the state as a larger bloke in a bar, and picture the populace as a small bloke in the same bar. The large bloke bares a tattooed bicep, and says to the small bloke 'did you spill my beer?'
The Moroccan police are the tattoo.
And for us, they were definitely a problem. Too many brands of them, too many of each brand, too heavily-armed, too everything.
So maybe that's why we're getting jumpy. Maybe that's why, five days ago, Benjamin - softly spoken Benjamin, who loves chess, and once thought he would become a rabbi -maybe that's why Benjamin called me a fucking shit bastard.
We were sitting round the trestle table in the dining-hall, chewing our way through a tajine stew, cooked by Cyrus and Latifa, and nobody was feeling much like talking. The Fairs had spent the day constructing a full scale mock-up of the front part of the consulate offices, and we were tired, and smelt of timber.
The model stood behind us now, like the set of a school pantomime, and every now and then somebody would look up from their food and examine it, wondering whether they'd ever get to see the real thing. Or, having seen it, whether they'd ever get to see anything else.
'You're a fucking shit bastard,' said Benjamin, leaping to his feet and standing there, clenching and unclenching his fists.
There was a pause. It took a while for everyone to realise who he was looking at.
'What did you call me?' said Ricky, straightening slightly in his chair - a man slow to anger, but a terrible enemy once he got there.
'You heard,' said Benjamin.
For a moment I wasn't sure whether he was going to hit me or cry.
I looked at Francisco, expecting him to tell Benjamin to sit down, or get out, or do something, but Francisco just looked back at me and kept on chewing.
The fuck I do to you?' said R
icky, turning back to Benjamin.
But he just kept on standing there, staring, clenching his fists, until Hugo piped up, and said that the stew was great. Everyone fell on this gratefully, and said yes, wasn't it fantastic, and no, it definitely wasn't too salty. Everyone, that is, except me and Benjamin. He stared at me, and I stared back, and only he seemed to know what this was about.
Then he turned on his heel and marched out of the hall, and after a while we heard the scrape of the iron gate opening, and then the Land Rover's motor grinding into life.
Francisco kept on looking at me.
Five days have passed since then, Benjamin has managed to smile at me a couple of times, and now we're all set to go.
We have dismantled the model, packed our bags, burnt our bridges and said our prayers. It's really quite exciting.
Tomorrow morning, at nine thirty-five, Latifa will enquire about a visa application at the American consulate. At nine forty, Bernhard and I will present ourselves for an appointment with Mr Roger Buchanan, the commercial attache. At nine forty-seven, Francisco and Hugo will arrive with a trolley bearing four plastic barrels of mineral water, and an invoice made out to Sylvie Horvath of the consular section.
Sylvie has actually ordered the water - but not the six cardboard boxes on which the barrels will be resting.
And at nine fifty-five, give or take a second, Cyrus and Benjamin will crash the Land Rover into the west wall of the consulate.
'What's that for?' asked Solomon.
'What's what for?' I said.
'The Land Rover.' He took the pencil out of his mouth and pointed at the drawings. 'You're not going to get through the wall like that. It's two feet thick, reinforced concrete, and you've got those bollards along the side as well. Even if you get through them, it'll take your speed right down.'
I shook my head.
'It's just a noise,' I said. 'They make a big noise, jam the horn down, Benjamin falls out of the driver's door with blood all over his shirt, and Cyrus screams for some first aid. We get as many people as we can into the west side of the building, finding out what the noise is about.'
'Do they have first aid?' said Solomon.
'Ground floor. Store-room next to the staircase.'
'Anyone qualified to give it?'
'All the American staff have taken a course, but Jack's the most likely.'
'Jack?'
'Webber,' I said. 'Consular guard. Eighteen years in the US Marine Corps. Carries a standard 9mm Beretta at his right hip.'
I stopped. I knew what Solomon was thinking.
'So?' he said.
'Latifa has a Mace canister,' I said.
He jotted something down - but slowly, as if he knew that what he was writing wasn't going to make a lot of difference.
I knew it too.
'She'll also be carrying a Micro Uzi in her shoulder bag,' I said.
We were sitting in Solomon's hired Peugeot, parked on some high ground near La Squala - a crumbling, eighteenth-century edifice that once housed the main artillery position overlooking the port. It was as nice a view as you can find in Casablanca, but neither of us was enjoying it all that much.
'So what happens now?' I said, as I lit a cigarette with Solomon's dashboard. I say the dashboard, because most of it came away with the cigarette lighter when I pulled, and it took a moment to put the whole thing back together. Then I inhaled, and tried, without much success, to blow the smoke out through the open window.
Solomon kept on staring at his notes.
'Well, presumably,' I prompted him, 'there will be a brigade of Moroccan police and CIA men hidden in the ventilator shafts. And presumably, when we walk in, they will pop out and say you're under arrest. And presumably, The Sword Of Justice and anyone who's ever had dealings with it will shortly be appearing in a court just two hundred yards from this cinema. And presumably, all of this will happen without anyone so much as grazing their elbow.'
Solomon took a deep breath, and let it out slowly. Then he started to rub his stomach, the way I hadn't seen him do for ten years. Solomon's duodenal ulcer was the only thing that could make him stop thinking about work.
He turned and looked at me.
'I'm being sent home,' he said.
We stared at each other for a while. And then I started to laugh. The situation wasn't funny, exactly - laughing just happened to be what came out of my mouth.
'Of course you are,' I said, eventually. 'Of course you're being sent home. That makes perfect sense.'
'Look, Thomas,' he began, and I could see in his face how much he was hating this.
'"Thank you for a very fine piece of work, Mr Solomon,"' I said, in my Russell Barnes voice. '"We surely want to thank you for your professionalism, and your commitment, but we'll take it from here, if you don't mind." Oh, that is just perfect.'
'Thomas, listen to me.' He'd called me Thomas twice in thirty seconds. 'Just get out. Run for it, will you?'
I smiled at him, which made him talk faster.
'I can take you up to Tangier,' he said. 'You get yourself into Ceuta, and then a ferry to Spain. I'll call the local police, get them to park a van outside the consulate, the whole thing blows over. None of it ever happened.'
I looked into Solomon's eyes, and saw all the trouble that was in them. I saw his guilt, and his shame -1 saw a duodenal ulcer in his eyes.
I tossed the cigarette out of the window.
'Funny,' I said. 'That's what Sarah Woolf wanted me to do. Take off, she said. Sun-kissed beaches, far from the madding CIA.'
He didn't ask me when I'd seen her, or why I hadn't listened to what she'd said. He was too busy with his own problem. Which was me.
'Well?' he said. 'Do it, Thomas, for God's sake.' He reached across and took hold of my arm. 'This is crazy, this whole thing. If you walk into that building, you're not coming out alive. You know that.' I just sat there, which infuriated him. 'Jesus Christ, you're the one who's been saying it all along. You're the one who's known it all along.'
'Oh, come on, David. You knew it too.'
I watched his face as I spoke. He had about a hundredth of a second in which to frown, or open his mouth in amazement, or say what are you talking about, and he missed it. As soon as that hundredth of a second was gone, I knew, and he knew I knew.
'The photograph of Sarah and Barnes together,' I said, and Solomon's face stayed blank. 'You knew what it meant. You knew there was only one explanation for it.'
At last, he dipped his eyes, and loosened his grip on my arm.
'How did the two of them come to be together, after what had happened?' I said. 'Only explanation. It wasn't after. It was before. That picture was taken before Alexander Woolf was shot. You knew what Barnes was doing, and you knew, or probably guessed, what Sarah was doing. You just didn't tell me.'
He closed his eyes. If he was asking for forgiveness, it wasn't out loud, and it wasn't from me.
'Where is UCLA now?' I said, after a while.
Solomon shook his head gently.
'I don't know of any such device,' he said, still with his eyes closed.
'David ...' I began, but Solomon cut me off.
'Please,' he said.
So I let him think whatever he had to think, and decide whatever he had to decide.
'All I know, master,' Solomon said at last, and suddenly it sounded like the old days again, 'is that a US military transport aircraft landed at the Gibraltar RAF base at noon today, and off-loaded a quantity of mechanical spares.'
I nodded. Solomon had opened his eyes.
'How big a quantity?'
Solomon took another deep breath, wanting to get the whole thing out at once.
'A friend of a friend of a friend who was there, said it was two crates, each one roughly twenty feet by ten by ten, that they were accompanied by sixteen male passengers, nine of whom were in uniform, and that these men immediately took charge of the crates, and removed them to a hangar by the perimeter fence, set aside for their exclusive us
e.'
'Barnes?' I said.
Solomon thought for a moment.
'I couldn't say, master. But the friend thought he might just have recognised an American diplomat among the party.'
Diplomat, my arse. Diplomat, his arse, come to that.
'According to the friend,' Solomon continued, 'there was also a man in distinctive civilian clothes.'
I sat up, feeling sweat shoot from the palms of my hands.
'Distinctive how?' I said.
Solomon put his head on one side, trying hard to remember the exact details. As if he had to.
'Black jacket, black striped trousers,' he said. 'The friend reckoned he looked like a hotel waiter.'
And that sheen to the skin. The sheen of money. The sheen of Murdah.
Yip, I thought. The gang's all here.
As we drove back towards the centre of the city, I described to Solomon what I was going to do, and what I needed him to do.
He nodded every now and then, not liking a single moment of it, although he must have noticed that I wasn't actually blowing party streamers either.
When we reached the consulate building, Solomon slowed right down, and then eased the Peugeot round the block, until we came level with the monkey-puzzle tree. We looked up into its high, sweeping branches for a while, then I nodded to Solomon, and he got out and unlocked the boot of the car.
Inside there were two packages. One rectangular, about the size of a shoe-box, the other tubular, nearly five feet long. Both of them were wrapped in brown grease-proof paper. There were no marks, no serial numbers, no best before dates.
I could tell that Solomon didn't really want to touch them, so I leaned in and hauled the packages out myself.
He slammed the car door and started the engine as I walked towards the wall of the consulate.
Twenty-four
But bark! My pulse like a soft drum
Beats my approach, tells thee I come.
