Flashback (25 page)

I had seen that photograph, not just once but many times. I was certain of it. I had known this woman, just as Werner had known her, just as the man on the video had. For it was him in the picture as well, the handsome one, the swimmer, so at ease in his white cotton shirt, the same man who stood with Naser Jibril while her throat was slit. No, I told myself. I hadn't been working for anyone. I'd known all along what was on the video, and it was to solve her murder that I'd come to Morocco.

I put my hand to the computer's screen and touched her face, the tear forming in her right eye. My mother, I thought, the knowledge as certain as my own presence in the world.

TWENTY-ONE

I had fallen asleep, arms crossed on the desk, head cradled in them. When the knock came, it slapped me awake and I sat up, eyes wide open, heart frantic. Helen was up, too, her feet rolling from the cot to the floor in one swift motion. Her gun was drawn, her finger to her lips in a warning for silence.

The knock came again, a heavy fist rattling the thick wood.

“You expecting anyone?” I whispered.

Helen shook her head, then paused for a moment, her knuckles white on the stock of the gun, her feet deciding which way to move.

“Police,” a man's voice called from the other side of the door. “Open the door.”

Stepping in my direction, Helen reached into her pants pocket and pulled out a rumpled business card.

“Anything happens to me,” she whispered, “you go to the Café Becerra in the Petit Socco. Ask for Ishaq. Give him this.” She handed me the card. “He'll get you to Spain. From there you'll need to get yourself and the pen drive to Paris. Can you do that?”

I nodded.

“Good. When you get to Paris, go to the American church. Post a note on the bulletin board, the one outside. It should read:
Uncle Bill, In town for the weekend. Ring me at the George V. Katy
. Tell me what the note says.”

I swallowed hard. “Uncle Bill,” I repeated, “In town for the weekend. Ring me at the George V. Katy.”

“Okay. There's a tearoom across from St.-Julien-le-Pauvre. Go there the next day at four in the afternoon. Take a table alone and order a pot of Darjeeling. Can you remember this?”

“Yes.”

“St.-Julien-le-Pauvre,” she said.

“A pot of Darjeeling,” I repeated.

She pointed to the card in my hand. “Café Becerra. Ishaq,” she said. Then she started for the door, motioning toward the bathroom as she went.

I nodded and slid off my chair, pulling the pen drive from the laptop, slipping it and the business card into my pocket as I made my way to the bathroom.

I drew the curtain closed and made a careful survey of my surroundings. The room was the size of a small closet, the only fixtures an old pull-chain toilet and a tiny sink. On the opposite wall, next to the sink, was a small window. Barred, I noted, though the metal grate was fastened directly into the plaster outer wall. The screws that held it in place were corroded and rusty.

I heard Helen undo the latch on the front door's iron porthole. The tiny hinges creaked open; then a pop sounded, the muffled thump of a silenced gunshot. Helen let out a strangled cry, her body thudding against the wall, her gun clattering to the floor.

I leaped upward, grabbing for the old pipe that ran across the bathroom ceiling. Gripping the metal, I swung forward and hit the grate feet first. The plaster loosened, and I felt the screws wrench partway free. I swung back and kicked again. I could hear commotion in the room now, a man's voice speaking Arabic. Salim, I thought, the old vasopressin memories coming back to me.

I kicked at the grate again, and this time it popped loose. Dropping to the floor, I scrambled up onto the sink and pulled myself through the narrow opening. It was a thankfully short drop to the roof below, but I landed on my side, jarring the shoulder I'd hurt in my tussle with Salim that night outside the Mamounia.

Wincing at the pain, I rolled up and drew the Beretta. I could hear Salim above me, his voice through the open window, and then the distinct crack of an unsilenced gunshot. The bullet erupted at my feet, sending up a spray of gravel and tar.

I sprang forward and sprinted, dropping down onto the neighboring dwelling. A second shot sounded, this one just missing my heels. I crouched in the shelter of the roof's edge and fired back, the action coming easily. Steady, aim, shoot, I told myself. The plaster wall shattered, and the head in the window dropped from view.

Taking a deep breath, I steadied myself and waited for Salim to reappear, but the window went dark instead. Yes, I thought, I knew how to do this kind of thing. I had been this person, and she lived inside me still, this woman I'd denied, this woman I'd feared. Now my very survival rested with her. I glanced behind me and saw the path I would take, the roofs of the medina forming an unbroken pathway. A way out, I told myself, as I scrambled forward and leaped down onto the next house. Everything would be fine.

*   *   *

It was early daylight when I finally made my way down the Rue Dar el-Baroud. The morning was gray, the bay dark as oil, the chop etched in froth. The Continental glowed against the ashen sky and filth-streaked medina like a rose at dusk. I passed the old hotel without stopping and headed east through the medina. Stopping at a shop on the Rue as-Siaghin, I bought a plain brown burnoose and a cheap leather shoulder bag, then wandered down the Rue des Almohades till I found a grimy and nondescript pension.

Twenty dirhams got me an unplumbed room on the second floor. Another outrageous fifty, and the manager reluctantly produced a bowl of greasy broth, a wedge of stale bread, a handful of dates, and a hard-boiled egg. Hardly a feast, but it was enough to take the edge off my hunger. I ate in my room, then slipped the burnoose on, put the Beretta, my money, and my passports in the leather bag, and headed out again.

It was just midmorning, but already the Ramadan hush had settled over the Petit Socco. A few old diehards played chess over ghosts of mint tea or sat alone in the cafés with imagined cigarettes and coffee. But save for them and the occasional tourist trying to recapture the Tangier of William Burroughs or Paul Bowles, the square was nearly empty.

I found the Café Becerra easily. The tiny establishment sat on the northeast corner of the plaza, its handful of outdoor tables clustered beneath a grime-streaked awning, its only clientele three scrawny stray cats asleep on the patio. Stopping several yards from the café, I pulled the burnoose down low over my face and slid Helen's card from my pocket. There was neither name nor address on the plain white rectangle, just a simple representation of the Hand of Fatima, the Moroccan good-luck talisman, a woman's palm facing outward.

Keep us safe, Lord,
I whispered, the old compline prayer. Reaching into my bag for reassurance, I touched the barrel of the Beretta, then crossed the last few yards to the café's open front door.

It was dark inside the restaurant, the air rich with the smell of the evening's
harira
already on the stove. A shriveled old man in a brown burnoose had either died or fallen asleep at one of the inside tables. His hood was pulled down over his eyes, his mouth open slightly, his hands clasped on his chest. A cane rested against the table. A dark young man who looked as if he was fresh from the king's prisons sat behind the bar thumbing through a dog-eared girlie magazine. It was a cheap publication, the women all fat and amateurish, with greasy hair and bad makeup.

His eyes shifted slightly, taking in the burnoose, and he grunted something in Arabic. When I didn't move, he looked up at me. “Closed,” he said in French, sneering at the Western face behind the hood.

“I'm not here for tea,” I told him.

He shrugged, then slowly turned the page. “We are closed,” he tried again in English.

“I'm looking for Ishaq,” I explained.

The man scanned the page in front of him, the glossy picture of a fleshy woman in black leather underpants and a merry widow. “Sorry,” he spat. “No one here by that name.”

“A friend sent me,” I said, setting the card on the woman's crotch.

He looked down at the Hand of Fatima for a moment, then pushed the card off the magazine and across the bar toward me. “Where's Helen?” he asked.

“Dead,” I told him, returning the card to my pocket.

He considered me for a moment, his eyes hard and black as coal. Part of a tattoo was visible above the collar of his shirt, the top of some intricate decoration. “There,” he said finally, nodding toward the motionless old man.

He called out in Arabic, and the wizened figure opened his eyes and stared out at me from beneath his burnoose. The two had a brief exchange of words; then the old man beckoned me to his table.

“You must excuse Kahlil,” he said, motioning to the barman as I took a seat opposite him. “He is a little rough around the edges.” He spoke perfect French, cultured and easy, each word delicately formed.

“Of course.”

“And you,” Ishaq said, resting his knotted hands on the table. “You have come for transportation, no?”

I nodded. “Yes. Can you get me to Spain.”

“Anything is possible,” he conceded, with fake modesty. His eyes were bright beneath the shadow of the burnoose.

“How much?” I asked.

“May I assume time is of the essence?”

“You may.”

He drummed his fingers on the table. “I could arrange for something tonight, but for a white woman, on such short notice, I would need at least four thousand, American.”

“Two thousand,” I said. “I'll give you the cash right now.”

“You are trying to insult me?” he protested. “I couldn't possibly do this for less than thirty-five hundred.”

“Three thousand,” I told him.

The old man shook his head and flashed me a look of reluctant disgust. “Three thousand,” he conceded.

I opened my bag and counted out half the money, then slid the bills onto the table in front of him. “Half now, half on delivery,” I told him.

He shook his head. “I'm afraid that's not how we do business, Mademoiselle. This is a dirty affair, I know, but you'll just have to trust me. It's three thousand now, or the deal's off.”

Reluctantly, I counted out the remaining fifteen hundred and passed it to him.

He smiled at the sight of the currency. “Take the number fifteen bus tonight from the Grand Socco toward Cap Malabata,” he said, secreting the money into the folds of his burnoose. “The last one leaves at around eight. Get off at Ghandouri and walk toward the cliffs at the eastern end of the beach. There will be a boat sometime after midnight.”

He looked right at me. “Don't worry, my dear. There will be a boat. Now, if you will excuse me, it seems I have other business to attend to.”

I stood and turned. Three men had come in while I was with Ishaq, West Africans, Senegalese or Ivory Coasters from the looks of them, no doubt shopping for the same thing I'd come for.

“It has been a pleasure, Mademoiselle,” I heard the old man say as I headed for the door.

TWENTY-TWO

I slept like a corpse in my narrow bed at the pension and awoke to darkness outside my window. It was close to seven by my watch. Down in the street voices clamored and hummed, crowds driven by newly full stomachs and nicotine. I got up, went down the hall and relieved myself, then came back to the room and washed my face and hands in the cold-water sink.

We all live with a variety of illusions, the crooked nose, the lazy eye, the faint scar no one else can see. Or the promise of courage under fire, the belief in some kind of undeniable inner virtue. For so long I'd had nothing but the face in the mirror, nothing but what I'd come with, the careful tracery of the bullet, this delicate boundary between the self I'd been and the one I wished myself to be. Now, in the room's paltry light, in the cheap warped glass, I barely recognized myself.

I dried my face, pushed my hair back, and checked the old scar. And then, without warning, I thought of the child. I could smell it as if it were there in the room. Soap and powder and the faint odor of sour milk.

Turning to the bed, I slipped the black box from the leather shoulder bag and spread the seven passports out on the worn coverlet. Five years, I told myself, paging through the blurred immigration stamps, confirming what I'd seen that night in the bathroom at the El Minzah. Not one of the passports had been used in the past five years. Hadn't Abdesselom said as much at the Continental?
Five years and not a word
.

And yet here I am,
I heard Heloise say that summer morning in the kitchen. I could see her still, tan forearms shining with steam and sweat, eyes closed as she gave herself to the pleasure of her cigarette, to that single moment of unfettered quiet.

Yes, I thought, that's how it works, not five times a day, not ten, but hundreds, each fragile instant of faith a surrender to the unknown, to the story we all must choose for ourselves. For in the end, the only thing certain is what we can never really know. Memory or not, we are all dumb and blind, fooled, like Brian, by some hollow reflection of ourselves. In the end, all we are is what we believe.

Yes, I had been these women in the passports, but I had also chosen to leave them behind. I'd had a child somewhere in those five years, and another life, one in which Leila and the others didn't exist. When I had come back, it had not been as a traitor, but to find out what had happened all those years ago in Pakistan, to learn who had killed my mother.

And Patrick Haverman? He had loved me. He had believed me when I'd told him why I'd come, had loved me enough to help me. And the truth, not just hope or hazard, was that I'd loved him back. That's why the people who were supposed to help him had silenced him instead.

This, then, was my story, my faith, the one I chose. Someone's mother, someone's child, the girl of his dreams. Of this I could be certain, but there was much more I didn't know.