Flashback (14 page)

He cried out for help, but his friends were already gone. Working to free himself, he kicked me hard in the shins, then sank his teeth into my arm.

Wincing against the pain, I yanked my arm away and shifted my grip so that I had both of his wrists behind his back. “I'll call for the police,” I warned.

A shadow passed across his face, the unmistakable look of sheer terror. He stopped struggling and glared up at me.

“My pack,” I said. “Who asked you to take it?”

He shook his head vehemently. “No one.” I could tell the way I held his arms was hurting him, but he wouldn't give me the satisfaction of showing it. “I take for me,” he insisted.

As good a thief as he was, he was an equally poor liar. “I won't hurt you,” I said, loosening my grip just slightly. “But I know someone paid you to steal it. Who was it?”

He looked up at me, his eyes beginning to fill with water, but said nothing.

Hoping he wouldn't call my bluff, I mumbled something about the police station and started forward, pushing him in front of me.

“Please,” the boy pleaded. “It was
l'allemand
.”

As thick as his accent was, it took me a moment to understand what he meant.
L'allemand.
The German.

“His name,” I prompted.

The boy shrugged.

“He found you in the Djemaa el-Fna?”

“No,” the boy said, shaking his head, frustrated by my adult ignorance. “He has a great house in the Ville Nouvelle. My mother's sister works there.”

“Where in the Ville Nouvelle?”

The boy shrugged again. “Near the Jardin Majorelle.”

I paused a moment. “You'll take me there,” I said.

“Please, Madame,” he entreated. “No police.”

“No police,” I told him. “I promise.”

Because the streets in much of the Old City are too narrow for vehicles of any kind, all goods are transported either by human or by donkey. When people die, their bodies are wrapped in white cloth and carried through the medina on the heads of their relatives, floating along above the fray like leaves washed from stream to river to sea.

It was this same current that swept us toward the Bab Doukkala. Once the boy and I left the empty side alleys and found one of the medina's main arteries, we didn't walk so much as ride, buoyed by the crush of the crowd. It was midafternoon when we emerged from behind the medina's red walls into the twenty-first-century rush of the Ville Nouvelle. I hailed a
petit taxi,
and we rode the rest of the way, the boy snapping directions to the driver.

As is so often the case in Moroccan cities, where what faces the street provides little clue to the character of the homes, the windowless facades of the neighborhood we finally stopped in revealed almost nothing of what lay behind them. Only the occasional glimpse of well-tended foliage, old poinsettia bushes and towering palms, and the preponderance of well-dressed Europeans and mirror-black Mercedeses, hinted at just how far from the
souqs
we had come.

The taxi pulled to the curb, and the boy started to get out. “Which house is it?” I asked, holding him inside.

He pointed to a large gate. “There.”

I reached into my pocket, pulled out what cash I had with me, forty dirhams and some change, far more than what the cab would cost, and handed it to the boy. “Take him back to the medina,” I told the driver. Then I opened the door and stepped out onto the sidewalk.

THIRTEEN

Among Holocaust survivors, periods of retrograde amnesia are not uncommon. I once spoke to an old woman, another of Dr. Delpay's patients, who had been to Bergen-Belsen as a child and was still haunted by the fact that she could remember nothing of the eighteen months she had spent there. It's tempting to think of this as a blessing, the brain's way of saving itself. But to her, for whom bearing witness was the greatest salvation, for whom dozens of loved ones could be known only through memory, the loss was unspeakably painful.

“We were always hungry,” she told me, pulling a chocolate bar from her pocket, proof of her compulsion. Some sixty years later she still could not leave her house without food. “My sister says we were,” she said guiltily, “but I don't remember it.”

“Your past is not a
bouchon
menu,” Dr. Delpay had said when I'd first told him of my plan to go to America. “It all comes together on one big plate:
quenelles, andouillette, tablier de sapeur
. You can't pick and choose.”

“Yes.” I'd nodded, but Delpay could see I didn't believe him.

“He'll find you, you know,” he'd insisted. “Your friend from the rooftop. He doesn't care that you don't want to be found.”

I'd told myself he was wrong, but even then I'd thought of the woman with her chocolate, the way her speckled hand had reached for it in her pocket.

Now, as I watched the taxi make a U-turn and head back to the Bab Doukkala, I thought of her again, and of that morning in the kitchen with Heloise, her cruel God. Yes, I told myself, there was no picking and choosing, no answers but all the answers, and the certainty that knowledge, even the worst kind, is worth the risks.

I headed across the street, trying to make like a tourist out for a stroll. The large iron-and-wood gate, the villa's only visible entrance, was closed and, I assumed by the keypad and intercom on the outer wall, locked. A tall, thick, pisé wall, topped with jagged shards of broken glass, ran the length of the grounds. A porcelain plaque on the gate gave a street address but no name. Short of ringing the bell and asking, there seemed to be little I could do to get any more information about the house or its owner.

Ringing the bell, I thought, was a crazy idea, though not so crazy as it might at first seem. Stepping closer to the gate, I pushed the little round button below the intercom.

There were a few seconds of silence, then the speaker crackled on and a static-garbled yet polite female voice asked me to identify myself.

“It's Chris Jones,” I said in English, choosing the most generic American name I could think of, ignoring the fact that my unseen inquisitor had spoken French. “I'm here to see Mr. Thompson.”

There was a confused pause on the other end, then, in impeccable English, “I'm sorry, Madame. Did you say Thompson?”

“Yeah, Fred Thompson.”

“There is no Mr. Thompson here,” came the reply.

“Sure there is,” I said. “We met last winter in Chamonix. He gave me this address.”

“There is no one here by that name,” the voice repeated.

“Just tell him it's Chris,” I persisted, “from Dallas. He'll remember.”

“I'm sorry, Madame,” the woman apologized again, her tone showing exasperation this time. “This is the Werner residence.”

“Well, where does Fred live, then?” I asked, incredulously.

“I don't know, Madame,” she said, curtly. “Good day.” Then she clicked off, and the intercom went dead.

I lingered by the gate for a moment longer, then cut back across the street. The Werner residence, I thought. Werner. Walking the length of the wall, I shadowed the perimeter of the property. The villa was on a corner, and two sides of the enclosed grounds came right up to the street. The house's remaining boundaries bordered the equally imposing villas on either side. Besides the main gate, a large wooden door near the rear of the property, which I assumed was a service entrance, was the only opening in the unbroken plaster wall. The whole place looked as if it had been built to withstand a siege, from prying eyes or angry rabble or both.

I did a tour of the neighboring homes, making a loop around the large block the Werner villa was situated on, sticking to the far side of the street. Each of the properties showed evidence of at least some kind of security system. A discreet army of surveillance cameras studded the walls and rooftops. The sound of barking dogs could be heard from inside one of the compounds. Here was the price of wealth, the penalty of privilege in a place of such abundant poverty.

Finishing my tour, I turned back onto the street where the taxi had let me out and stopped several yards from Werner's main gate. There was a limit to the amount of loitering even a dumb blond playgirl could do in a neighborhood like this, and I figured any more snooping would have to be done at night.

As I took in the villa and its walls one last time, I heard the electric gate beep in warning. The latch unlocked, and the two iron doors swung slowly outward. The black prow of a Mercedes appeared, sun blazing off its chrome bumper and hood ornament. The car paused for a moment in the driveway; then the wheels turned in my direction, and the hulking sedan moved out into the street. I ducked back around the corner, flattening myself against the wall.

I heard the car roll forward, its German engine speaking the language of engineering perfection. The hood appeared, then the front windows, and I caught a glimpse of the driver. He was a North African, with powerful shoulders and a heavy jaw. In the seat next to him was another man, a familiar face, his eyes hidden behind dark sunglasses. One of the men from the train, I thought, though I couldn't be sure. Then the rear windows slid into view, and I knew I was not mistaken. Through the window closest to me I could see another man, this one a European, middle-aged, with salt-and-pepper hair. Next to him was a young Moroccan, his features unmistakable as those of an old friend. But he wasn't a friend. It was my other fellow passenger, the one who had called himself Salim.

He glanced in my direction, and I held my breath, as if by not breathing I could keep from being seen. But Salim must not have noticed me. The Mercedes kept going, toward the Boulevard de Safi and the heart of the Ville Nouvelle.

*   *   *

The trip through the medina and the subsequent taxi ride had left me somewhat disoriented, but I had a vague idea of my location in the Ville Nouvelle. I knew the Jardin Majorelle lay almost dead north of the Place de la Liberté. And from there, it was just a short walk through the Bab Larissa and down the Avenue Mohammed V to the Koutoubia Mosque and the Hotel Ali. A brief detour would take me to the Place du 16 Novembre and the All Join Hands offices. I'd give it one more try, I told myself, heading in what I hoped was a southerly direction, wending my way finally to the dusty axis of the Ville Nouvelle.

I found the door to the All Join Hands offices still locked, but one of the windows on the second floor of the building was open, the shutters thrown ajar to let in the afternoon breeze. I knocked hard and took a step back, peering up at the window. Someone moved inside, a white-shirted figure rising, then flitting out of sight. I heard footsteps on the stairs and the deadbolt rattling; then the door opened, and a sunburned face appeared.

“Can I help you?” the man asked. He was short and stocky, uncomfortably pink, with the flaccid, overfed look of so many Americans. He wore a badly wrinkled white dress shirt, the sleeves rolled above his elbows, and his dirty-blond hair was coarse and unruly.

I had not prepared myself for the question, so it took me a moment to answer. “I'm an old friend of Pat Haverman's,” I said finally.

The man squinted at me, his face nearly swallowing his eyes. “Hannah, right?”

I nodded.

“Sorry,” he apologized. “We only met that once, at the pool at the Ziryab, I think. I didn't recognize you with your clothes on.”

“Of course,” I told him. “I'm afraid I've forgotten your name.”

“Charlie,” he said, “Charlie Phillips.” He motioned for me to enter, and I stepped into the foyer. “We thought you'd come by,” he said. Closing the door behind me, he started up the narrow flight of stairs. He was breathing heavily from the exertion of climbing the stairs, and when we reached the second-floor landing Charlie paused a moment to catch his breath.

“Look who I found,” he called out, before stepping through an open doorway into a space crammed with a vast array of electronics.

In the far corner of the room was a sitting area furnished with some old chairs, a coffee table, a badly scarred dartboard, a small refrigerator, and a TV. And there, sprawled on a sagging couch, his long, athletic legs stretched out before him, a bottle of Flag Spéciale in his hand, a copy of the
Herald Tribune
in his lap, was Brian Haverman.

“I had a hunch you'd show up here,” he said, smiling. He set the paper down, swung his feet to the floor, and stood. Something about the ease with which he moved unnerved me.

“You shouldn't have followed me,” I told him, lingering in the doorway.

“You shouldn't have run out on me,” he countered, taking a swig of his beer.

I glanced quickly around the cluttered space that seemed to serve both as office and as meeting place for the homesick Americans' club. Some shelves above the refrigerator held a selection of U.S. supplies, most of which I had only seen in movies. There were several boxes of Pop-Tarts, an unopened bag of Doritos, and a healthy supply of Jack Daniel's.

“You want a beer?” Charlie asked, his face flushing a deeper red. He was clearly working on an early drunk and didn't want to have to go it alone. “We've got a stash of Budweiser, though Brian here prefers the local stuff.”

I shook my head. “No, thanks.”

Charlie shrugged, already heading for the fridge. “So where'd you disappear to?” he called over his shoulder. “Brian says you just came back to Morocco a few days ago.”

“I've been in France,” I said, looking at Brian as I spoke, wondering what else he'd told the man.

My answer seemed to satisfy Charlie; he didn't ask for details. I was just another expatriate drifter, like how many others who'd stopped here for beer and satellite baseball games, just another girl from the pool at the Hotel Ziryab. A displaced American with a little money and a lack of ambition. What had he said?
I didn't recognize you with your clothes on.