“Moroccan VIPs,” Celia said, just in case Major Abbas had missed that point.
“And, of course,” said Jake, “I’ve kept a diary of my time in Marrakech. A very detailed diary obviously. Names and places, dates, bribes paid…And I can tell you,” he added, “most of it makes Saturday night at Studio 54 look like my first day at Montessori.”
Neither Jake nor Celia had ever been to Studio 54, obviously enough. He hung out at CBGB, a club in the Bowery situated below a flop-house. He was talking, however, not just to the Arab police officer but to de Greuze and the Frenchman could be relied upon to know of Studio 54, in a way he might not of a club where at least one person was reputed to have jacked off in the chilli, the bartender often forgot to change the beer and the whole place stank of piss.
“This famous diary,” Major Abbas said darkly. “You can show it to me?”
Something passed in a glance between Celia and Jake. A look that marked a point beyond which Celia had not intended to go, although she promptly went straight beyond it. Jake had always had that effect on her.
“Of course he can’t,” she said dismissively. “Jake writes it in weekly installments and I mail it to Jann Wenner.” She named the brains behind Rolling Stone, hoping fervently that Mr. Wenner would never find out quite how liberally she’d taken his name in vain.
“Malika,” Moz reminded Celia, pulling at her hand. Very carefully, the Englishwoman unpeeled his fingers.
Again that glance.
“We’ll help your friend later,” said Celia. “If we can. But first we need to sort this out because Mr. de Greuze says you’re in trouble.” Celia spoke slowly, as if to a very small child. “And we all know you didn’t really do anything wrong.”
“I didn’t?”
“No,” said Celia. “It’s okay. Jake’s told them the truth.” There was something about the way Celia said this which told Moz more was being said than he first understood. At the same time he felt a cold certainty that something very wrong was in the process of happening and somehow he was allowing it to happen.
“Malika,” Moz insisted.
“Forget her.” The Major’s voice was hard. “Worry about yourself.” Turning to face the boy, he said, “I need you to tell me the truth. Were you here last Wednesday evening?”
“Of course he was.” Jake’s voice was equally sharp. “We’ve already been through this.”
“I wasn’t talking to you,” said Major Abbas. Words that should have reduced Jake to frightened silence.
Jake just sighed. “I’ve been through it with Mr. de Greuze.” He put heavy emphasis on the word “mister,” so maybe the Frenchman wasn’t a mister at all. He certainly behaved like an officer in the Sécurité, all sweaty skin and suspicious, watchful eyes.
“Well?” Major Abbas demanded.
“I was…” Moz knew exactly where he’d been. On the roof of Dar el Beida, the dog woman’s old house opposite the entrance to Derb Yassin. Sun tightening the skin on his neck as he slowly unbuttoned the front of Malika’s shirt. “I was with Malika,” he said firmly. What else could he say?
The Major and the Frenchman looked at each other, then the Major glanced from Jake to where Moz sat beside Celia.
“You’re certain?”
Moz nodded.
In de Greuze’s pocket was a folded square of foolscap. A dark stain on one side forming a map of no country Moz could recognize, the other outlined Malika’s part in planting a bomb for the Polisario. The confession used the word “I” a lot and Moz was referred to throughout as “he.” It was signed in childish capitals.
“What’s that?” When Jake stepped forward the Major also stepped forward, putting himself between Jake and the boy.
“Let him read it,” Major Abbas said. “He’s the only one who can tell us if this is true.”
“Of course it isn’t,” Moz said, handing back the paper. “It’s a lie.”
“Malika didn’t plant the bomb?”
Moz stared at the Major. “She was with me,” he said firmly. “That’s the truth. She was with me.”
“And you were both where?”
“On the roof of Dar el Beida. I’m doing some painting there. An English friend of Jake’s is going to buy the house.” He would have told them about delivering the drugs for Caid Hammou, but then he’d have been in even worse trouble.
“Moz was not on that roof or any other,” Jake said firmly. “The boy was here.”
“And I’m expected to believe that?” de Greuze asked. He was looking at Jake when he said this, but it was Celia who answered. And for once her voice was matter-of-fact, no cut-glass drawl to drag her words beyond breaking.
“Moz was here,” she said. “For the entire afternoon and evening. None of us even left this riad.”
“That’s not true…” Moz protested.
The four adults ignored him.
“You have witnesses?”
“Of course.” It was Jake who answered the Frenchman. “Celia and I were both here. I say the boy never left my side and Celia is my witness.”
“She’s your girlfriend.” A sour smile accompanied those words.
“No, she’s not,” said Jake, avoiding the Englishwoman’s gaze. “She’s my manager, and her name’s Lady Celia Vere. Her uncle was British ambassador to Paris.”
The look on de Greuze’s face suggested this information was new to him. “And you,” he said. “Should I know who you are?” His English was heavy but the sarcasm was edged with something that suggested he was reassessing.
Jake smiled. “I don’t see why you should,” he said. “It’s not likely we’ve met.”
The way Jake said this made Celia wince, but de Greuze barely seemed to notice. “I take it Jake Razor isn’t your real name?”
“A persona,” said Jake. “Nothing more.”
“And your real name?” That was Major Abbas.
The name he gave meant little to Moz but de Greuze recognized it instantly and even Major Abbas blinked.
“As in…?”
Jake nodded, casually apologetic. And behind his nod were good schools, family trusts, Norland nannies and a New York bank and City of London brokerage that still bore his name. He’d been given the very best to resent and Jake had the wit to recognize that. Of all the facts stacking themselves up in the head of the elderly Frenchman, only one was really significant.
The financier about to donate Virgin and Child with St. Anne to the New York Met was Jake’s grandfather. His donations to the Met, the National Gallery in London, the Paris Louvre and the Prado in Madrid were famous. His donations to competing political parties more famous still.
“You are still American?”
“For my sins,” Jake said. “My mother was English,” he added, catching Moz’s eye. He’d told the boy he came from London. “I went to Westminster.”
“It’s not true,” Moz said.
“Yes it is,” insisted Jake. “I lived with my grandmother.”
“No,” said Moz tearfully. “It’s not true that I was here. Malika and I spent the entire afternoon on the roof. She let me get into her knickers,” he added desperately, as if that might convince them. “You’re both lying.”
“Moz.” Celia’s voice was firm. “You were here.”
“No I wasn’t.” He sounded about twelve, Moz realized. Arguing in a language that wasn’t even his own. “You know I was with Malika…” Actually, there was no way they could know that but Moz was beyond caring.
“Look,” Celia said. “We know the girl’s a good friend of yours but you can’t help her. She confessed. When Mr. de Greuze came here we had to tell him the truth. You were with us.” Her voice hesitated and something sad flitted across her face.
“With Jake,” she amended. “Jake told him everything.”
“I had to,” Jake said. “It was the only way…And now I’m the one in trouble.” He looked between Major Abbas and de Greuze, his eyes troubled, almost apologetic.
“What?” Moz asked.
“What did you tell him?”
Although he already knew. Understanding now the look given him by the soldiers on the stairs of the police station, the contempt in the eyes of the Frenchman.
“I showed them the photographs.”
What photographs? Moz wanted to shout, but his throat was tight and despair had begun to shake his body. He felt as if the whole world were watching him and the weight of their watching was more than he could bear.
“I’m sorry,” Celia said, “there wasn’t anything else we could do.” Her eyes were huge with tears and she wouldn’t look at Jake when he came back from collecting the folder.
There were maybe fifty photographs in all. Most showed Moz sleeping, his head cradled on a thin forearm, his naked body turned on its side and curled around itself like a child suspended in dreams. An upper sheet had been turned down in all of these, sometimes only as far as Moz’s hips, although a few showed the sheet turned lower. The last showed him standing naked in a doorway, his head turned towards the camera and a surprised expression on his face.
“You took these?” Major Abbas asked.
Jake nodded.
The spike-haired, gangly boy from the Mellah was beautiful. Not handsome like Hassan or striking as Malika had been but beautiful, a single reed waiting to be broken.
“I’ll take those,” said Major Abbas, holding out his hand.
“Why?” de Greuze looked puzzled.
“Evidence,” said the Major.
CHAPTER 42
Lampedusa, Monday 9 July
“You know what,” said Petra Mayer, fanning photographs out on the mattress in two neat rows. “I can’t believe it took me this long to work out. These are you. You’re the Arab boy.”
The speed with which Prisoner Zero jerked his gaze from the window was impressive.
“Everyone’s got it wrong,” she said, with a slow smile. “And, as yet, no one has any idea just how badly.” Her excitement was almost tangible. “Just wait till Gene finds out.”
A large number of people considered Petra Mayer unreliable, badly dressed and unable to cope with the simplest things in life, like driving round the Washington Circle without crashing (right outside the GW Hospital). An embarrassment that happened only once and about which far too much was made, mostly by journalists who could barely read the titles of her later books, never mind understand them. Those who knew the Professor better would have recognized the gleam in her eye.
Entire layers of fact were being discarded and reassembled. She’d taken all the evidence and put it together in the only way that worked.
“They are you, aren’t they?”
Prisoner Zero gave a slight shake of his head, while simultaneously mouthing the word “yes”…Conflicted, Katie Petrov would have said and she’d have been right. Although after the drugs, the culture shock and the years in Amsterdam and Paris it was a wonder he knew who he was at all.
“Almost professional,” said Petra Mayer, picking up a black and white of a boy about to step into a shower and then making herself put it back. “They show real talent.”
The naked man remained silent and after a few seconds his gaze returned to the window. There was something very deliberate about the way he took his attention away from the photographs.
Petra Mayer smiled. She’d won; he just didn’t know it yet.
Accompanying the two dozen photographs was a letter from the new Chief of Police in Marrakech which outlined the contents of the envelope to which it had been attached. Inside the envelope had been the photographs, an evidence docket, a typed suggestion that the photographs be burnt and a handwritten note giving reasons why they were to be sealed and marked for storage in a secure vault rather than destroyed.
No mention was made on the docket of the boy’s name or where the photographs were taken, and the only name Petra Mayer recognized was scrawled on the first note, the one outlining reasons for the photographs’ destruction, which was couched as a suggestion but read like an order.
Claude de Greuze. The man had been infamous.
“This is a good one,” said the Professor. She crossed the tiles and dropped to a crouch in front of Prisoner Zero. His nakedness meant nothing to her and as for the stale sweat that rose from his body, it was what she would expect in this heat from any man who hadn’t washed for a day or so. Petra Mayer was very pragmatic about these things.
“Take a look.” She flipped the photograph round so Prisoner Zero could see a younger version of himself asleep and naked on a bed. When he moved his head she moved the photograph with it.
“Do you want to talk about it?”
The man shook his head, openly this time. And it was all Petra Mayer could do not to grin. Two psychiatrists, three doctors, a Moroccan diplomat and even a top-level military psychiatrist who’d worked Guantanamo Bay, brought out of retirement especially, and she was the one who got a reaction.
“Did Jake take these?” Another photograph, of the same boy sleeping. He looked younger in that one, more vulnerable and, Petra Mayer had to admit it, very obviously under-age.
“Does it matter?”
It was an interesting voice, particularly to someone like Petra Mayer, who had dabbled in social linguistics. Interesting because Prisoner Zero’s voice had a slight dissonance, a mere trace of something usually found in those who’d remained silent for a long time, whether voluntary or enforced.
There was a second reason. Most people are defined by their voices—place, class and education all being easily identified. Languages adopted through the act of learning, however, carried indicators of the person teaching as well as of the person being taught.
The extreme examples were well known. Professor Mayer had met a Zambian physicist who’d read his original degree at a university outside Kiev and come back talking like an elderly Chechen prostitute. A palaeontologist at New York’s natural history museum, a self-educated man from Brooklyn, spoke Persian with the Tabrizi accent of a 1950s aristocrat.
In the prisoner’s statement were echoes of Moroccan Arabic, Upper East Side New York, received BBC pronunciation and something that could only be Amsterdam-inflected Dutch, which was the Netherlands’ equivalent of Brooklyn.
“Of course it matters,” said the Professor. “I want you to tell me what really happened.”
The prisoner stood up, walked past her and dropped to a crouch by the bed, reaching out to take one particular photograph from the mattress and examine it carefully, while Professor Mayer looked over his shoulder.
Dark eyes stared from a half-turned face and the face looked towards the camera. In a looking glass behind the boy could be seen a naked sliver of the photographer, all soft hip and pale skin. Petra Mayer wondered why she hadn’t seen it earlier.
When Prisoner Zero put the photograph of the naked boy back again it was face down beside the other pictures on the mattress. Although that still left several shots the right way up.
“They’re good,” she said.
The prisoner seemed slightly surprised, the first time his face had actually expressed emotion, and Petra Mayer absent-mindedly made a mark on a chart, checking the time on her watch without being seen to do so.
“Technically,” she said. “I mean technically. Jake must have owned a good camera.”
“It was Celia’s,” said the prisoner.
He’d only found out how expensive it was when he’d seen the thing advertised in a magazine. A newer model, minimal changes and an extortionate price. He’d thought of all nasrani as rich, that this richness varied Prisoner Zero only realized later, around the same time he finally came to understand how far the blonde Englishwoman had been up that particular scale.
“A Leica, with rapid-load and rewind, proper engraving to the brass, self-timer, functioning shutter and flash socket. They were hand-made,” Prisoner Zero added, just in case Petra Mayer didn’t know this.
She’d offered him money, Celia had. Cash to get out of her life and start again, somewhere he wouldn’t be known and
cause her problems. At the time he’d thought the sum incredibly generous, even as he refused the envelope she tried to push into his hand. It was only later, when Jake told him about her father dying and the will being contested by two of the man’s ex-wives, that Moz discovered just how much money had been settled on Celia on her eighteenth birthday, with more at twenty-one, twenty-five and thirty-two.
Then Celia’s offer began to seem almost contemptuous. Of course, by then he’d done what she wanted and for nothing. He was out of her life and deep into the dregs of his own, a life circumscribed by Jake, heroin and the narrowness of a single mattress on the floor of an unfurnished squat in Amsterdam.
“Celia?” said Petra Mayer. Short questions generally worked best and she was old enough to have taught herself not to fill in the gaps, to leave space for what the other person wanted to say. “I thought Jake was your lover.”
“Lady Celia Vere.” The bitterness in the prisoner’s voice was undeniable now. “Her uncle was British ambassador to Paris, you know.”
Petra Mayer shuffled her file. “No,” she said, “I didn’t know. How did you first meet?”
Prisoner Zero smiled. “I stole her watch.”
“Is that true?”
Prisoner Zero shook his head. “No,” he said. “I only pretended it was me. Someone else took it.”
“Who?”
“A girl called Malika,” said Prisoner Zero, and then he didn’t say anything else for a very long time.
CHAPTER 43
Northern Mountains, CTzu 53/Year 20
“You forgot this…”
The voice came out of nowhere. At least, that’s what Tris thought until she realized it was the man she’d left sleeping, if “man” was the right word, which she was beginning to doubt.
“…and you’d better put that down.”
Tris looked at the blade she held and then at the half light obscuring the entrance to her rocky overhang, where Luca was unwrapping himself into existence. The Baron had the manners not to point out that the child’s sword Tris held was his.
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