Chapter 27
Two female guards take her to the guard house, bathe her and wash her hair like she was a child. They comb her, rub her in creams and lotions, and dress her in an elegant velvet tracksuit. Then she is unceremoniously bundled into the back of a van, which may or may not be the same van that delivered her to this hellhole. She has no watch, and without windows in the back of the van, she has no way of knowing how long they have driven, but she guesses it to be around three hours before the car stops.
She is hauled out and left on the lawn of Mrs. Scott-Wren’s house in the dark of night. The van speeds away.
Three dark figures come running toward her. She starts shaking. Not again! Oh, no, not again!
“Camilla! Relax. You are home!” a male voice calls out.
She faints.
When Francis enters the room, his mother is sitting in the lounge chair by the window. Ms. Nielsen is perched on the bed, a tray with a washcloth, a small tub, and pots of creams at her feet. The two women glance at him as he enters, but Camilla doesn’t react. She is sitting up, her back exposed. Ms. Nielsen is tenderly applying salve to the angry red welts crisscrossing Camilla’s slender back. Camilla is whimpering quietly. Francis flinches.
The curtains are drawn, and only the brass lamps are lit. The thin white curtain around the old iron bed gives the scene a feel as though from another time. Francis has the sense that he is visiting the sick chamber of a young lady hundreds of years ago.
As if sensing his thoughts, Camilla turns her head and looks at him. She could pass for a Jew, he thinks, looking at her dark brown, almost black eyes and her pale face framed by abundant dark hair.
Her eyes are clouded and don’t seem to recognize him.
He smiles. “Hi, Camilla.”
She turns her head slowly back, once again facing the wall.
Ms. Nielsen has finished her work. She gently draws Camilla’s nightgown down and guides the young woman to lay back on the pillows. She reluctantly vacates her seat for Francis, as he indicates that he needs to speak to Camilla.
“How are you, Camilla?” he asks in his softest voice. He reaches out to push a lock of hair away from her cheek.
She starts violently and jerks her head back.
He withdraws his hand. “Camilla, it is me, Francis. And you are safe here with my mother and Ms. Nielsen.” He looks intently at her. “You know that, don’t you?”
Her eyes are staring unseeing, looking at the ceiling.
“Please nod, Camilla, if you understand me.”
The shadow of a movement confirms that she hears him.
“All right, good. Very good. So, Camilla, tell me what happened.” His voice is still gentle, soft, calming.
A sound escapes Camilla’s lips.
“What did you say? I couldn’t hear you.”
He leans forward, putting his ear to her mouth.
“Nazis.” Her voice sounds broken and weak.
Francis stares at her. Did he hear correctly? “I am sorry, Camilla; could you repeat that?”
“Nazis. Nazis. NAZIS,” she says, her voice rising, shrill, hysterical. Her eyes widen as she attempts to sit up, but Francis gently pushes her back down.
“Hush, Camilla, hush. All is good. You are safe.” He beckons Ms. Nielsen to the bed. “Ms. Nielsen is right here and will not leave your side. Outside are armed guards. I promise you.” He takes her hand. “Look at me, Camilla. Look at me!”
She turns her head slowly, and her eyes come to rest on his, but they see nothing. Or rather they see something, just not him.
He suppresses a shiver.
She is lost.
Aloud he says, “You are truly safe here, Camilla. Trust me.” But even as he says the last words, they ring false in his ears. He had been sure she would be safe here, and yet, from his mother’s ground, from the house of his childhood, somebody had dragged her out to what is possibly the worst nightmare in the young woman’s life.
He leaves her in Ms. Nielsen’s competent care.
The fjord is gray and flat. A heavy fog hangs low, obscuring the coast on the other side. Seagulls float elegantly, searching, spotting, diving. From the conservatory on the small hill in front of the house, the view on a clear day extends to Æbleø, the tiny island just north of Fyn. But today, Francis and his mother can hardly see the mound of the fjord.
Mrs. Scott-Wren lifts a heavy teapot and pours him a cup. The scent of bergamot fills the small space. He leans back in the white wicker chair and takes a careful sip. The tea is hot and fragrant. He closes his eyes and allows himself just a moment to sit here, close to his childhood’s fjord, with his unwavering mother, smelling the fragrant tea. Just a moment of peace, of not being concerned and worried. Just one more moment before the discussion they need to have.
It is his mother who breaks the silence. “There is no point, Francis, in blaming yourself. They were professionals. Nobody could have foreseen that professionals would come after Camilla. Nobody.”
“Ah, but that’s my job, Mother,” he mutters, eyes still closed.
“Your job, my boy, is to do your best, not the impossible. How often must I tell you this?”
He smiles. Her lecture is so familiar. He opens his eyes, reaching out a hand and clasping hers. “And you, Mother, must accept that from now on until we know what is going on, Dhammakarati’s men will stay. And we need to build an underground safe place.
The old woman holds up a hand. “Stop, Francis! I accept the guards as long as Camilla is here, but you will not turn my house into a fortress. We have been over this before,” she says, her voice rising slightly. “There will be no underground or over-ground safe place.”
He meets her glance, “But, Mother…”
“Don’t ‘but, Mother’ me, Francis. If you want Camilla in a place that is safer than here, by all means, take her. But as for Ms. Nielsen and myself, we are not going to spend our old age in a fortress, always hidden from the little life we may have left.”
Francis smiles. He had known how she would react, but it had still been worth a try. “I don’t want to take Camilla anywhere else. One thing is her physical safety, but she is in need of your levelheadedness and Ms. Nielsen’s tender care.”
His mother nods. She usually comes out on top of the arguments. “But I still find it hard to understand who would want to hurt her so much,” she continues. “I understand that she has acted fraudulently, but that doesn’t warrant so dramatic and devastating a punishment.”
“You’re right. I don’t have an answer, but I intend to find it, Mother. You may be assured of that.” He grasps his mother’s hand and continues, “I will find the sick bastard who is behind this.”
They sit in silence for a while, listening to the angry squalls of the seagulls.
“She is not well,” Francis says after a while.
“No. She is not at all well.”
“What do you make of what she said? ‘Nazis’? What can she have meant?”
“I don’t know, Francis, but it is the one word she keeps repeating. The only word, in fact, she has said since she came back to us.” She shudders, and he takes her hand, knowing full well that the word brings back memories no person should have to live through.
Chapter 28
He has just reached his office when he hears the sickening sound of metal against metal. Oh, no, not the Aston! —is his immediate thought. He rushes to the window, and sure enough, that bloody woman has just trashed his new baby with her fucking SUV. Who the hell allowed women to drive military-like cars in the city?
He stalks down the corridor, runs down the stairs, and reaches the front door just as he hears a timid knock.
“I am so, so sorry! It is not my car, and my foot slipped.”
He pushes past her, anxious to see how much damage has been done to his brand-new Aston Martin DB11. Not only has he waited eighteen months to have the car delivered, but he has desired that very brand of car since he saw the DB5 in his first James Bond movie. Th
e right side of the rear bumper hangs loose. His heart breaks, and he can almost feel the physical pain.
She has followed him to the car and is now standing behind him. Silent.
He turns to her, bile rising in his throat. He wants to throttle her. He opens his mouth, but nothing comes out at first. She looks completely different. Her coolness gone, her face flushed, and is that a tear in her eye? She looks incredibly vulnerable, like a different woman. For one confusing moment, he sees his first girlfriend standing in front of him, rather than a tough, frigid hack.
He shakes his head and hears himself saying, “It’s nothing. Don’t worry about it.” He hands her a tissue from his breast pocket, but she starts crying, and he doesn’t know what to do.
“I am sorry,” she says, gesturing to the car with one hand while drying her eyes with the other. “I will make it up to you. I promise. I’ll pay for everything.” She looks at him through her tears, and his heart skips a beat. “Please, forgive me,” she says, her hand on his arm.
With tears in her eyes and her pleading voice, what can he do but forgive her? “I need to make some calls. Come in while I do that and have a drink. I am sure we could both use one.” She nods. She sniffles a little, and he guides her by the elbow back inside. The heavy oak door closes softly behind them.
For the second time that day, he walks ahead of her to his office. She doesn’t wait for his invitation but flops down on the sofa this time, as if she needs more support than a lounge chair can offer.
“Whiskey all right with you?” He desperately wants a whiskey and silently prays that she will join him instead of him having to fix a girly drink.
“Yes, thank you.”
He pours two generous drinks, lifts his own to her, and downs it in one large gulp.
“Wow,” she says, eyes wide. Then she does the same, eyes squeezed shut when she’s done.
He can’t help laughing. She looks like a child who has just eaten a worm in a challenge.
She smiles at him and holds out her glass for another. She continues to lounge on the sofa while he makes his calls. When he is finished, he turns to her, “All done. They will pick up both cars in an hour or so. You will probably have yours back tomorrow.”
“And yours?” she says quietly. “Your Aston?”
“Ahh. That might be a while.”
“I am so sorry,” she says for the umpteenth time.
He waves a hand. He almost wants the tough, controlled, icy journalist to return. Too much female submission makes him dangerous to himself. And to others.
“You must be hungry,” he says, “why don’t I order in some food while we wait?”
“Or I can make us an omelet? If you have a kitchen, that is?”
“You cook?” He can’t keep the surprise out of his voice.
She laughs, “Not in any fifties hausfrau way, but I can handle an omelet. Show the way, master!”
His stomach flips as he hears the word “master.” It must have been a coincidence, he decides. Surely. Or is she baiting him?
The kitchen is downstairs, where it has been since the days when kitchens were something to hide away along with the domestics, rather than show off as a display of culinary prowess. The room is all dark marble and shiny steel, more reminiscent of an art deco factory than a place of food, eating, and sensuous pleasures. He opens the enormous double fridge, “Your eggs. Knock yourself out, chef. I’ll get us some wine.”
He is away in the wine cellar for perhaps ten minutes, selecting just the right red. As he walks up the old, worn stairs, he hears singing. Singing!
A warm smell greets him. “This smells like no ordinary omelet. What is it, cumin?”
She turns around from the stove with a big smile, “Yes! Very good. You know your spices.”
“I know my food,” he answers, “and my wine.” He holds up the Pingus 2012. “This baby here is from Harlan Estate. It will suit your omelet perfectly. It is all earth, fruit, and spice. Where did you learn to cook?”
“Oh, I can’t cook.” She places the Mauviel bronze frying pan on the old oak dining table. “I have a few dishes I can do fairly well. Nothing fancy, though. Just enough to keep me alive. Tuck in.”
He does. “This is great,” he says, “it reminds me of Morocco.”
She laughs, “Well, it is a Moroccan recipe. You know Morocco?”
“I have been there a few times on business.” He takes another bite to stop himself from saying anything else. He doesn’t want to get into business again. The atmosphere is too promising. She is almost beautiful in the soft light and bouquet of the fine Pingus.
“What is your relation to Morocco?” he asks.
“I just love it. The smell, the colors, the romance.” She smiles. “I have an apartment in Marrakesh, actually, in a beautiful old riad. Or flat is perhaps too grand a word. There are a couple of rooms and a bathroom. I take my meals in the restaurant, where the head chef taught me to make an omelet. It is absolutely gorgeous out of season. Like now.”
A couple of hours later, both cars have been picked up. The second bottle is gone. Slow jazz plays softly in the background, and the mood is mellow and warm. He has no desire to bring the evening to a close. She is funny, sweet, and yes—a tough journalist. The paradox in this woman is a challenge—his kind of challenge.
The next morning, he receives a text from her: “Come to Marrakesh for a couple of days. Allow me to make my blunder up to you. Please!”
Chapter 29
A man in a chauffeur’s uniform meets them at the gate. His skin is so black it is almost blue.
“Mr. Hampton?”
James nods.
The chauffeur yells at two men with name tags, and they hurry in the direction of the luggage carousel.
“Will sir and madam want to go directly to Marrakesh, and then somebody will follow with the luggage? Or do you prefer to wait?” His English is heavily accented but perfect. Too perfect, she thinks irritably, too risky.
James looks at her. She shrugs her shoulders.
“Have somebody follow later with the baggage,” she hears his master’s voice for the first time—the white man giving the brown man his orders.
James’s hand is on the small of her back as she bends to enter the car, a slight pressure, a delicate push. Her inner thighs tingle.
The car is cool and spacious, with individual seats in the back, allowing for a center console with a small drink cabinet.
“There is something romantic about the idea of Casablanca,” she whispers to James as they drive. “Bogart, Bacall, Mackintosh, and other spies come to mind.”
“Yes.” He smiles, “But it is precisely the idea of Casablanca. Not the real thing. There’s hardly any place worse if you ask me.”
She nods, accommodating him. However, she can recognize the ghost of a war-time airport. This is Africa, she thinks, the part of Africa for hippies and romantics. I shouldn’t be here.
“Perhaps we can stop there on the way back? Have dinner?” he suggests.
The riad is hidden behind a tall, rust-colored wall. A heavy forbidding double door, reinforced with cast iron decorations, is set in the wall. It would take quite some courage to open this unless you have been invited. Inside the door is a small antechamber. The hostess, a heavily made-up French woman past her prime, bats her eyelids at James and welcomes them, and a liveried waiter appears, ushering them into the courtyard.
They enter and see two-storied white walls surrounding an inner courtyard with a mosaic-turquoise pool in the center. Arched doors open into ground floor suites and rooms. Greenery along the four inner walls creates shadowy corridors so that guests can stay cool on the way from their rooms to the restaurant. It is beautiful. It is ideal. It’s the perfect place for romance. Only the waiters move with rather more deliberateness than one would expect. But then, they are all highly-trained professionals, she thinks to herself. All of them handpicked by her boss.
They follow the liveried waiter to the first floor where her
rooms are located. The doors have been flung open, revealing the main room. James looks around; she can see the satisfaction in his eyes. The rooms are indeed gorgeous with freshly painted white walls, an enormous bed covered in white cotton sheets, Moroccan pillows and low tables, and a lounge covered in white fabric. Everything is dark or white, so aesthetic and so pleasing that she involuntarily lets out a sigh.
“It is peaceful, don’t you think?” she asks, nuzzling into James while the waiter hurriedly looks away and busies himself with the filigreed shutters.
Light streams into the room, almost like an attack, covering the floor and heating the room.
“No,” she says, “leave the shutters closed.” We prefer darkness, she thinks, kissing James on the mouth to make the waiter disappear. How dense is he? She hasn’t seen him before. In fact, she doesn’t recognize any of the staff. It must be from a different batch than she has met before.
“A drink before dinner?” she asks.
“Yes. Absolutely. A drink and then a dip in the pool. We have time for that, don’t we?”
“We have all the time we want. Besides, nobody eats early anyway.”
Waiters are swarming around the few guests dining in the restaurant. In the back sits a handsome Arab, dark eyes and beard, and he’s in a traditional Jabador embroidered in heavy silver thread. His wife, presumably, sits beside him in a slinky evening gown. Her eyes are like cat’s eyes, with thick lines of kohl. The conversation seems intimate, their heads close together and their voices low. They could be honeymooners. Another couple a few tables away are Europeans, maybe British. They look slightly uncomfortable in their holiday clothes, uncomfortable in the company of such elegant diners and waiters, who with their French disdain for their own trade let the European couple know they come farthest down in the food chain. Except for the gentleman in the far corner. He is treated by the waiters with deep respect, even though he is the incarnation of a European imperialist in his linen suit and loafers.
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