Borderless Deceit (49 page)

For constancy; for loyalty; for oneness with a friend
.

The way Morsi talks, I feel I'm in a box seat at a spectacle on the timeless constants of great civilisations. It stimulates me
.

If through his poetry we are spectators during dinner, we are actors after it. There is the movement towards the bedroom. He asks me to undress. As I do, he stands close, hands clasped under his chin. A thoughtful pose, eyes radiating tenderness. When I am done he caresses my shoulders and lowers his hands to my hips. He guides me to the bed and asks me to lie back so that I can watch him disrobe. He does so solemnly. When he begins his love act he recites in Arabic and at the end cries out the name of Allah
.

When our breathing is more regular I ask if he is happy
.

“I am happy, Rachel.”

“I wish to share my thoughts with you.”

“That makes me still happier.”

“When we make love you make it seem it is God's will.”

“You are God's will, Rachel. In my dreams I kneel before you.”

“When I think of you I think of beauty, how you create it between us.”

“How we create it. When we lie together it is as if we have arrived in heaven.”

“We could go further. We could create lasting beauty. Beauty combining ours could reach into the future.”

“You wish that?”

“If you do too.”

“I wish God's will.”

“I long to have a child by you, Morsi.”

Without hesitation Morsi declares that he desires me to be the woman with whom to share that great richness. I ask if we can begin to try next time, to which he replies: we must, we will. His joy, he says, has moved beyond the power of words
.

The quickness of the agreement, the absence of a pause, no moment of reflection – is it credible? The words are unambiguous, but is that all they are – words glibly delivered? Absent from them is true emotion. Lying next to Morsi I let it sink in. Nikko was right
.

The yacht's ritual runs its course. We put on elegant long robes and retire to a small salon where we recline on cushions to have tea. Morsi prepares a water pipe. Throughout I try to hide my distraction, but he notices something and asks what it is. I answer that I know from now on my life won't be the same. He nods absent-mindedly. As he smokes the pipe his thoughts are elsewhere, perhaps weighing things, perhaps already planning. Eventually I leave to change into my clothes, and at midnight he accompanies me to the deck where he places a formal kiss on my hand, then sees me descend into the launch. The warning lights have switched to bright. I know that, come what may, this is the last time I will see him
.

Back in the hotel I cannot sleep. Throughout the night I' m agitated. It continues next day during the return to Bucharest. There's anger and regret, but mostly there's fear. With what kind of monster have I been intimate? When he gives his killing orders, does he have that same sad resignation in his eyes? Does Morsi have a death wish for the human race? Is that why he carries on his business? And how did I manage to end up as his pawn ? With what lapse of judgment did I became his lover? How was it that I lived so long with blinkers on ? My disappointment at myself is so deep it makes me tremble. Tormenting me is another question – should I continue to carry his child? Because by then my pregnancy was entering the second month
.

Rachel stopped and looked at me. “Are you appalled?”

The question jarred me because I had been with her, on the inside of the drama, absorbing the scenes and recording the dialogue. This sudden request that I judge it had the effect of placing me outside it. had no idea,” I stammered. “What you endured. I should have helped.”

“You couldn't have. Anyway, I brought it on myself. Maybe Nikko was right. Maybe my sole focus was always myself. I see now that I seriously convinced myself of myself; it blinded me. The Foundation, Nikko, Morsi, and the years before that, when I look back.” Rachel's laugh came as if from the gallows. “It's all been.useless.absurd. If you despise yourself, I' m with you, Carson. Maybe we both have some way to go to become accomplished human beings.”

For minutes we didn't speak. This discovery of sameness – it took some time to settle. At last I asked delicately: “Are you still, I mean, pregnant?”

Rachel nodded. “I thought, if I' m to be murdered, who will miss me? Anne-Marie and Iain, you perhaps, my brothers in Oak Lake. But who will miss out? Who depends on me? No one except the new life in me. Since I had decided it should come into existence I couldn't now deny it that. I was suddenly more afraid for it than for myself. How long does it take to organise a perfect killing? I had no idea. If Morsi ordered one right away, could the assassin be sitting next to me on the plane? I began shivering so bad I spilled some of my drink on the passenger in the other seat, a lovely elderly gentleman, an antique dealer from Linz. Not a killer. He wasn't angry. He said his grandchildren did it to him all the time. Somewhere during the trip back I decided I would keep the child, that I owed it life and would run it no risks. Not one. That meant I had to disappear. I had to get beyond the reach of Morsi's hit men.

“Time was short. For a few days in Bucharest I made things look normal, going through the motions: office work, diplomatic calls, a few receptions. The Dutch ambassador asked why I was suddenly off wine. A yeast infection, I smiled back. But the whole time I was looking in every direction for strangers.

“I understand your world, Carson. I've had the briefings. A security type once came who said the information today comes from everywhere and appears on big screens in high definition format. Subtleties and nuances get amplified. Whatever information you looked at, Morsi could too. He'd either buy the view, or the capacity to assemble it. I knew I couldn't travel normally. But I did know where to go. On the third day back from Alexandria I walked out the residence with a small bag. At the bus station I decided I had to take one risk, a postcard to Anne-Marie, but I balanced it with a precaution. I sent one to Morsi too.”

“A postcard to Morsi?”

“I was thinking your way by then, Carson. That fake death certificate you created in Zurich. What was the name on it again?”

“Radu.”

“Your way of creating a diversion.”

“To make sure Benedictus couldn't come into the picture.”

“Yes. Well, on the postcard to Anne-Marie there was a Madonna and Child, but the picture for Morsi was of a Romanian knight, mounted, in black armour with a cross on his shield and carrying an immense sword. One swing of it and a decapitation would be complete. On that postcard I wrote:
Nikko knows.”

Briefly I was puzzled. “Nikko knows?”

“Well, think about it. What does Morsi know that Nikko knows?”

“That you became Morsi's lover.” When I got it I clapped my hands. “That's good, Rachel! Clever.”

Rachel laughed wryly. “Once I had disappeared without a trace, think Morsi would conclude a vengeful Nikko did me in?”

“Most likely that would be his fist reaction.”

“Too bad you're not in your Service cubbyhole any longer, Carson. With your talent for reporting people dead you could be creating a police file on me in some suitable location, Linz maybe, indicating my partially decomposed body was found in a dump, the autopsy showing death by suffocation. With the attention of Morsi's killing squad subtly directed there, he would definitely conclude Nikko was behind the arrangements.” Rachel appeared to relish this scenario – dying gruesomely – because a rogue's smile was settling on her face. How she resembled Jaime that moment, that irrepressibility,
that capacity to get over things and shelve such parts of the past as are no longer relevant.

After Rachel finished describing how the threat from Morsi had been countered, I observed that something in the direction of a fabricated police file, a phoney autopsy report, or a fake cremation could still be organised. She replied lightly: “Maybe it isn't needed. It could be overkill. I'll tell you how I got here, Carson, and you tell me if I stayed off the high definition screens.”

Rachel's face shed the sombreness with which the afternoon began. She became animated reliving her flight from Bucharest. Ironically, the trek that brought her to this porch was not dissimilar to mine. More sameness, more kinship in the making.

Rachel first goes north to get near the Hungarian border. In a remote, rundown little town, she switches directions. The next departing bus has a southwest direction, towards Serbia. At the border she produces her diplomatic passport, claiming she is travelling through Serbia to Croatia for a conference in Dubrovnik. A transit visa gets stamped.

She paused to inquire of me, “Would that set the big screen flashing? What's your guess?”

I thought back. I had access to plenty of information on certain Serbs, but not much of that material originated in Serbia. Serbia was still relatively disorganised. It lacked databases. “I doubt it got noticed,” I said. “Serbia keeps paper records which are tough to get at. Morsi would have to bribe half the government to gain access to the right files. Time consuming. Not low profile. Anyway, with the postcard he would likely only do some casual checking of standard information to see if you were travelling. He wouldn't be out to do a full hunt. He'd think Nikko had the dirty deed done somewhere around Bucharest.”

“I thought that too. So it was mostly a question of staying away from obvious places.”

In Belgrade, another change of direction. Dubrovnik on the Adriatic coast is mostly south. Rachel goes north. In Novi Sad she embarks on a tour boat for a Danube cruise upstream. The first mate, accepting a generous tip, says he can arrange unseen entry into Hungary. The cruise ends in a riverside town near the border and the first mate leads Rachel to a barge. The barage owner listens, says little,
nods once and points at his watch. When Rachel returns on the agreed hour, the barge has filled with scrap metal and soon casts off. She sits on a stool on the back deck. A river bend or two before the border, the captain points to a rusting ice box with holes drilled into the back. Rachel clambers in and the lid slams shut. No problem breathing, even if the posture is uncomfortable. An hour later, inside the European Union, the ice box opens, she climbs out, stretches, and enjoys the river's scenery all the way to Budapest. Remaining distant from the city centre, using a string of local busses – a kind of improvised milk run -she makes her way through Hungary into Austria. When she nears Vienna, taking the same precautions as in Budapest, avoiding closed-circuit cameras at the central station, Rachel asks the driver to let her off. He obliges near the outskirts and she walks half a dozen kilometres from an autobahn service centre to a tram line. An hour later she is ringing Iain's bell.

I nodded approval. No wonder Jaime and I hadn't found a thing.

“I can make light of it now, but I had barely slept for two days and was emotionally wiped. When Iain opened the door he stared at me as if I was a ghost. I collapsed. Iain swore. I partially got up, so that we both staggered in. He wanted to call an ambulance. I shrieked and clawed at him to prevent that. Delicious melodrama the whole time. I made it to the couch. He went to make coffee which revived me a little. When he poured himself a Scotch and offered me one too, I announced I was done with drinking for at least the next eight months. ‘Rachel,' he replied, his voice lilting, the delicate sarcasm coming back, ‘you look a wee bit shipwrecked. Did you acquire motherhood during a storm? Did the vessel splinter on the rocks? Was it all quite unforseen?' I nodded wearily. He sighed. ‘Rest first. Tell me then.'

“I came to around noon the next day. Eight days before, mere blocks away, I had been on my way to meet Nikko. Things had come full circle.

“Iain said adventure tales should be shared sitting around a fire while drinking whiskey. For this one time, though, would I settle for central heating, Turkish coffee and Viennese pastries? Once we had eaten he asked if the shipwreck had been bad. ‘Nothing left,' I replied. ‘Truly?' ‘Truly, Iain. Nothing. Nothing at all.'

“I told him the entire story: meeting Nikko in Geneva long before, then Morsi on his estate in Kenya, and the years of sitting on the board of the Foundation. Iain made his ironic asides. ‘A not unfamiliar story,' he said, ‘a white queen, a black knight disguised as her white king with a black bishop out to usurp him.' When I finished, he said, ‘So, each black piece will think the other has taken the white queen. What they don't know is that a white pawn came through. You're here now, Rachel, on the other side of the board. You're queen again.' I laughed. ‘A queen, but no realm, and in hiding too.' ‘Not at all,' he answered smugly. ‘Don't forget, you're half owner of a chunk of Costa Rican territory. The palace may be smallish, but it's nice enough. And what's better, it's secret. The only challenge is to get you there unseen.'

“Within days he'd made arrangements. There was a place for me on a UN cargo flight to Nicaruaga. I sat buckled in between supplies for a disaster relief stockpile. I also had a
carte d' entree,
and an official-looking letter from him, the head of the Vienna Office of the UN legal advisor. Another UN travel document he issued was for me to go from Nicaragua into Costa Rica. There was no fuss anywhere. They looked at the papers and ignored them.”

“Not bad,” I said. “Your own purdah.”

“Purdah?”

I explained what it was, but she shook her head. “Iain doesn't have that kind of power. I was untraceable because my last name has changed. I now have Iain's.”

My jaw dropped.

“I'm no longer Rachel Dunn. I've become Rachel Bruce.”