by Lex Lander
I drank to absent neighbours before spilling the envelope’s contents into my lap: eight items, of which the topmost was a colour studio portrait of the subject on A4 paper. Two other printed photos were of the Petite Europa settlement and the subject’s villa respectively, taken from the air. These were supplemented by architects’ blueprints of the villa grounds and the interior of the building, plus a large-scale map of the coastline eastwards from Tangier to the town of Ksar es Seghir. The remaining two sheets contained the subject’s vital statistics, printed out in good old Times New Roman font.
I ran through it for maybe the hundredth time. The man’s name was Akram Al’hauri. He was Egyptian, aged fifty-one, and he ran drugs by the container load. In other words, a regular scumbag. A laconic post-script, “Believed to be engaged in other criminal activities”, probably concealed more than it revealed. On reaching the end of the personal profile I refilled my glass and contemplated a sea no longer blue but sludge-grey, coloured only by the small craft and sailboards that darted like dragonflies. A gull coasted lazily past my window on a downdraught and squawked at nothing in particular.
Phase one of the operation was an inspection of Petit Europa, and, conditions permitting, of the villa. Before proceeding though, I needed confirmation that Al’hauri really had stuck to his plan to be here from the 18th. So I looked up his telephone number on his CV and called him using my cell phone.
As unscientific as that.
While it rang I propped the studio portrait on the bedside table, to match the face to the voice. The receiver at the other end was lifted and a bored incantation oozed from it.
‘Maison Al’hauri.’
‘Bonjour, monsieur,’ I boomed, full of the spurious bonhomie of a professional insurance tout. ‘Etes-vous Monsieur Al’hauri?’
He wasn’t, he was the major-domo, and he wasn’t about to fetch his master to the phone to answer a telesales call neither.
‘Je regrette, mais il est occupé.’
Occupé, i.e. otherwise engaged. Confirmation enough that he was in residence. But just to be sure …
‘Est-ce qu’il sera là ce soir?’
‘Non.’ A shade more terse, a “mind your own damn business” kind of tone. ‘Il va sortir.’
So he was going out. Short of making a nuisance of myself, I felt I had pushed it as far as I could. The line went dead, taking the decision out of my hands. The cell phone battery icon was flashing a warning so I connected the charger and plugged in. The electrical sockets here are the same as in France, which made it easy.
Object accomplished, I could now press on with phase two, the gathering of data: Al’hauri’s daily routine, a list of other residents at the villa, the security arrangements by day and by night, to mention but some of the blanks in my knowledge. Already I was impatient to move the process along. The thrill of the kill wasn’t in me yet, but it would be soon enough.
I siesta’d the rest of the afternoon away. My sleep was dreamless for once. On awakening to the long shadows of evening, I changed into shorts, T-shirt, and track shoes, and went down to the gym. A punishing 90-minute work-out later, showered and dressed casual-smart in a cream linen suit, I set off to buy me some hardware. And I don’t mean hammer and nails.
Three
An open bottle of Sidi Bughari wine stood on the dining table in the drab little room with its unpainted walls and tacky, Ikea-inspired furniture. The two brothers, Ahmad, the elder, and Yacoub, sat side by side facing me. Since Islam outlaws intoxicating liquor North African Muslims stick to mint tea as a rule, failing this, a concoction known as orange-flower water. This pair were somewhat less than devout. They downed two glassfuls of wine apiece while I was still checking mine against the light for foreign bodies.
Yacoub made a drinking motion with his hand. ‘S’good. Drink!’ he urged me.
‘Here’s to the hair of the dog,’ I proposed, with a silent apology to my constitution. I had a hunch Sidi Bughari and vodka would not co-exist in harmony.
Ahmad, turbaned, gap-toothed, inclined to plumpness, cried, ‘Allah to that!’ Yacoub, slimmer and better looking, nodded enthusiastically and drank with haste, as if it were an illicit treat that might be snatched away. The third member of the family, Yacoub’s wife, watched this performance from the other side of the room in wordless disapproval, eyebrows contracting. In her dark burka and veil she was not dressed for levity. I wondered idly if she were naked underneath.
Three toasts later Yacoub jumped up and left the room. When he returned he was armed with another bottle and what appeared to be a rolled-up grey blanket, which he deposited reverently on the table to the clink of metal against metal. Grinning, he then proffered the bottle. Reminding myself I was here on business, I primly covered my glass.
‘Later,’ I said softly. ‘Afterwards.’
Glances were exchanged between brothers, and Ahmad rattled off a fusillade of Arabic at which Yacoub looked sour and rammed the stopper back in the bottle.
‘Forgive my brother,’ Ahmad said, to an ingratiating display of gapped teeth and large tracts of gum. His French was rough-cast with an Arabic timbre. ‘He is still young and inexperienced in matters of trade.’
Yacoub merely glowered.
I waved a permissive hand and turned my attention to the bundle that Ahmad was now unrolling. The plasticky tang of gun oil rose from it.
‘It was said you wish for a pistol,’ he murmured. ‘However, it does no harm to give a choice, hein?’
So, maybe to flaunt the extent of his stock, he had brought both: two rifles, three pistols, all pristine and lightly filmed with oil. He sorted and arranged them on the grey blanket as if setting out a market stall.
The rifles were superfluous. I planned to hit Al’hauri close up. Ahmad, like any streetwise salesman, was quick to suss where my interest lay. He thrust a pistol at me.
‘This my top seller.’
I made no comment as I examined his offering, a 9mm Beretta 92F automatic, a type I had used on many occasions. Magazine capacity a healthy fifteen rounds, in a double column. Ensuring the gun wasn’t loaded, I operated the slide. As always, it felt natural in my fist, as if we were made for each other. A marriage made in hell.
‘It was said you prefer a revolver,’ Ahmad purred, ‘but I can assure you the Beretta is of the highest reliability.’
‘So I’ve heard.’ I squinted along the barrel, tried to get a feel for the balance. A full magazine would increase the weight by a significant amount, making it butt heavy, a point in its favour.
Yacoub tugged at my sleeve. ‘Ceci plus bon,’ he said, mangling his French in the manner of a British tourist.
‘Ceci’ was a second Beretta, and for all my close links with the gun trade it was a first encounter with the awesome 93R.
The basic format and profile of this pistol correspond to the 92 but mechanically they are chalk and cheese. The 93 is, in fact, a variation on the machine pistol theme, incorporating a 3-round burst facility and an extended magazine holding twenty rounds. My views on handgun design being conservative, I was critical of most attempts to create a fully-automatic pistol. It’s never been done with outright success – even the famed German Schmeisser was really a military machine carbine whose folding stock gave it a pistol-like appearance. On the other hand, it was claimed that the Beretta, thanks to a combination of the low cyclic rate of fire of under 120 rounds per minute, a prominent muzzle brake in the elongated barrel, and most of all the folding front grip, made for a steady shooting platform.
Ahmad reached across me, emitting Sidi Bughari fumes. ‘Here is the selector … you can choose single shots or automatic.’
I nodded and thumbed the selector catch from SAFE through FIRE to BURST, the last-mentioned distinguished by three red spots in a triangular grouping.
‘What would this little gadget cost me?’
Ahmad clucked and sucked his teeth, a sure auspice of impending extortion. Not that, privately, I minded paying over the odds. When you buy an
illegal firearm through an established trafficker you are assured of top grade merchandise and, no less important, top-grade ammunition. Most of all you also buy secrecy. No comebacks was the unwritten warranty among armourers. In the past I had had my own network of suppliers on whom I could call. For this, my renaissance job, I was relying on Giorgy’s.
A shadow darkened the Beretta as I turned it in my hands. I slewed round in my chair. Yacoub’s wife was beside me, so close her hip grazed my shoulder. Her huge, burnt-sienna eyes, which were the only visible part of her, fastened on me and remained on me as she reached over to touch the Beretta. Her breathing quickened as she stroked the barrel slide, making tracks in the oil with her fingertips.
I looked at Yacoub. He was unmoved, regarding her imperturbably. Ahmad seemed faintly amused.
I held the gun out to Yacoub’s wife. ‘Here, take it. Don’t be afraid of it.’
From behind the veil came a hiss of breath, and she recoiled as from a venomous spider. Ahmad laughed, a nervous honk.
‘She is a jihadist, monsieur,’ he sniggered. ‘She and others would have a revolution here in Morocco and make us into slaves of Isis if they could. For that, many guns will be required.’
Pinpoints of orange flickered in the burnt-sienna eyes. That was the only display of emotion that escaped the veil. Then she retreated to her chair, back to her submissive world, back to being the wife of a Muslim.
‘To resume, then.’ Ahmad pushed a stray black strand from his forehead. ‘You will see I have also brought a revolver, just in case …’
But I had fallen in love – if that’s not to make an obscenity of the word – with the second Beretta. I clutched it still, the walnut butt plates warm yet somehow cool to the touch.
‘You will take the Beretta.’ Ahmad sounded confident.
‘The price. You haven’t said.’
He smirked, shrugged. ‘Does it matter? To a man like you the price is of no consequence, is that not so?’
‘None at all,’ I agreed. ‘If you try to cheat me I’ll simply break your arm and we’ll say no more about it.’
Yacoub gave off a cackle and dug an elbow in Ahmad’s side. Ahmad swiped back at him but he jerked away, out of reach.
‘Very well, monsieur. The price is twenty thousand dirhams, including …’ he tacked on hastily as my expression hardened, ‘… one hundred rounds of ammunition. American ammunition,’ he stressed. ‘Remington.’
Twenty thousand dirhams was about two thousand dollars, which has an expensive ring, though it wasn’t much above the going rate for an illegally-imported 93R.
‘Fifteen thousand,’ I offered. Bargaining, really, for the sake of it. Meek acceptance of a quoted price is counted a weakness among Arabs.
‘Eighteen,’ Ahmad promptly parried.
‘Seventeen.’
We closed predictably at seventeen-five. A bundle of banknotes passed across the table and a seal was stamped on the transaction with more of the fiery Sidi Bughari.
Later that night, my guts awash with the stuff, and a wholly-illegal firearm concealed under the spare wheel in the Fiat’s boot, I had luck and to spare getting back to Tangier and my bed without falling foul of a Sûreté Nationale patrol.
Around dawn, when all but the birds were aslumber, I carried out my survey of Petit Europa. I left my rented Fiat in a dirt road off the highway, approached the settlement on foot, skirting the other villas, to finish up in a tree overlooking the high walls of Al’hauri’s palace of a holiday home. Even in this moneyed enclave of Westernisation it stood out as the cream of the cream. Had Al’hauri not been about to depart this life I might have envied him.
None saw me come, none saw me go, and I was back at the hotel in time for breakfast.
The rest of the day was set aside for relaxation, specifically a wander in the markets in the hope of coming across a trinket or ornament that wasn’t simply tourist junk. Some hope. It was a plan that was not destined to achieve maturity. It was altered radically and irrevocably around mid-morning, as I left the hotel boutique, glancing over the headlines of the day-old Sunday Telegraph (a new spate of Isis beheadings in Kurdistan). My attention was caught by a group of three people in the archway between the foyer and the coffee bar: a tall woman in shorts and singlet stood in conversation with a man of slightly above middle-height and rugged build, whose unusually wide shoulders gave him a boxy outline. He was wearing a dark blue shirt and white trousers, both immaculately pressed. His back was to me but his gestures implied agitation. The third member of the group was another female, who was sideways on to me, her features screened by sunglasses and shoulder-length blonde-ish hair. She was also dressed in shorts and singlet that emphasised a slightly boyish figure.
Had I not recognised the tall woman as my neighbour from the balcony I might well have walked on by. As it was, curiosity titillated, I pulled up six feet or so short of the trio, opened out my newspaper, and made a pretence of absorption in it while peeping over the top. The man was doing most of the talking, but sotto voce so that his words were absorbed by the general bustle of the reception area. Her responses, such as they were, were mostly monosyllabic. What made the tableau so intriguing was the unmistakeable tension between them. At one point he reached out to grab the woman’s forearm. She prized his fingers off with a show of irritation.
Unconcerned humanity flowed around them, oblivious of the drama. I had more or less come to the conclusion that it was no more than a husband and wife squabble, when the woman cried out, ‘Will you please stop pestering us?’
Why she didn’t simply walk away was a puzzle. I decided to lend a discreet hand. Three strides took me to the desk. An enquiring Arab male clerk approached, and, keeping my voice low, I leaned across and, speaking French to ensure there was no misunderstanding, said, ‘The lady over there under the archway seems to be having man trouble. As she’s a guest here, I suggest you do something about it.’
As the clerk frowned in the direction indicated, the man obligingly made another grab for the woman. Predictably she pulled free, whereupon the clerk, startled, scuttled off through a door behind the desk. Bemused, I was about to take off after him when he reappeared in the company of a massive, moustachioed character encumbered by several tiers of paunch. With the agitated clerk in tow, the moustachioed one bustled over to the little group.
I didn’t hang around to watch the outcome of my Good Samaritanship but took my newspaper up one level, to the terraced garden, where I ordered coffee espresso and installed myself among the shrubs and the creepers. Apart from an old man in Bermuda shorts tucking into a pyramid of ice cream, I was alone. The air was windless, the surface of the swimming pool tranquil, a dazzling splash of sunlight.
The waiter deposited my espresso before me. I was tearing the top off a sachet of sugar when the tall woman emerged from the hotel interior and crossed the terrace. She had good carriage – shoulders well back, pelvis thrust forward, projecting a feline self-assurance that complemented her height.
Passing close to my table she glanced sideways, and I raised my coffee cup in homage.
‘Problem sorted?’
Her jaw dropped slightly as she slowed.
‘I … beg your pardon?’
‘I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to interfere. You looked to be in difficulty.’
‘Oh, that.’ Her frown lasted only a moment or two before clearing. ‘Aah, I see. It was you who sent that hotel bouncer to my rescue, wasn’t it? I guess I should thank you.’
Only guessed? It sounded grudging.
‘Not unless I did the right thing.’ I smiled apologetically, hoping to put her at ease. ‘If I acted out of line, I’m sorry.’
‘No … it’s not that …’ She came closer, a diffident sidle. ‘May I sit down?’
‘Be my guest.’ I got to my feet, pulled out a chair. ‘Shall I order some coffee?’
‘Oh, er … yes, why not? And could you get a Pepsi or something for my daughter? She’ll be along in a sec.’ She sat cautio
usly, as if she expected the chair to be booby trapped. ‘I’ll pay, of course.’
‘My name’s Alan Melville,’ I said, as I resumed my seat. The pseudonym slid glibly enough off my tongue. So often did I travel under false identities that at times André Warner seemed to be another person altogether.
We shook hands across the table. Hers was cool in both senses. Her fingernails were painted silver, I noticed.
‘Clair Power,’ she said. The waiter cruised over, took our order without a break in his stride, and carried on to the far side of the terrace to serve some new arrivals.
‘Pretty efficient here, aren’t they?’ I said, making small talk the way you do with a stranger, marking time to see how the land lay.
‘Mmm,’ she said with a little nod. ‘I’ve been pleasantly surprised. Not that we spend much time in the hotel, we’re mostly out sightseeing. We may not get another chance for a long time.’
She fluffed up her short brown hair and leaned back, taking stock of our surroundings, while I took stock of her. She was worth the effort. Her age I put at mid-thirties. In her sexual prime and not bad in the looks department, with her deep-set, blue-green eyes, small soft mouth, and sophisticated veneer. There were some fine lines in the usual places, but these only served to augment her appeal. The impression was of a woman who experienced the pluses and minuses of life.
In a corner of the terrace was a grotto with a waterfall at which tiny birds came to bathe. She was looking that way now, and the dance and sparkle of the water lit up her solemn gaze.
‘Is there just you and your daughter, Mrs Power?’ I asked.
It was another way of asking if a husband was in the vicinity, and is the sort of question that sets alarm bells jangling inside most unattached women. In this regard Clair Power was true to her sex. Her appraisal, before replying, was shrewd, penetrating, yet far from hostile. A weighing of motives perhaps.
‘If you mean is my husband with us,’ she said at last, ‘the answer is no. Actually, he’s … well, I’m a widow.’
