Gorgeous East (48 page)

Capitaine Pinard stood at attention, unsettled by this oddly charged scene. Major Rabani ignored him for a long while, grimacing and sighing and arching his neck like a turtle as the youth worked him over. At last he looked up, and appeared both surprised and annoyed by the capitaine’s presence.

“I ordered you not to question my soldiers, Frenchman,” he said. “Not for any reason.”

“I’m not French,” Pinard said. “The Legion is my country.”

“You’re a rotten bunch of French mercenaries as far as I’m concerned,” Major Rabani growled. “Paid killers. You should have been shot as spies back in Laayoune.”

“Thankfully, the minister had a different opinion,” Pinard said, trying to keep his voice neutral, cool.

“The minister!” Major Rabani laughed unpleasantly, showing a row of expensively capped teeth. “The minister is a corrupt politician and a marked man. He will be replaced by the royal procurator as soon as I am able to make a full report.”

Pinard’s neutrality immediately extinguished itself. Clearly, the corporal back at gate seven had been correct about everything and the joint Morocco-Foreign Legion expedition to rescue Colonel de Noyer had fallen afoul of politics. It felt more natural this way. Morocco and the Legion had been enemies for more than a hundred years; the notorious atrocities committed by el-Krim had never been completely forgotten in Aubagne and vice versa. Pinard glanced around for an object he might be able to use as a weapon, and his eyes fell on the filigree lamp. He pulled it down on the major’s head, but what about the subaltern? This question was answered a moment later when the young man reached into his loincloth and pulled out a neat nickel-plated automatic.

“Private Jalal is my bodyguard,” the major said. “He won the regimental marksmanship competition last year for pistol shooting, didn’t you, Jalal?”

“Yes, sir,” Private Jalal said, grinning. “Got a nice gold medal for it too.”

“In other words, Capitaine, you and your men are under arrest.”

Pinard didn’t move, his eye on Jalal’s pistol.

“We were promised assistance—” he began, but stopped himself. The deal had been impossible, a cheat from the beginning. Things might have worked out differently with cash in hand, but the absence of cash gave people too much time to think about their integrity. He wondered now if Major Rabani would have felt such outrage with his pockets stuffed full of euros, but there was no time to answer: Pinard felt a breeze on his back and the tent flap swept aside and a dozen Moroccan soldiers entered, rifles in hand, wearing Kevlar vests.

“You and your Legionnaires will be taken to Fez,” Major Rabani explained, his voice cold. “There you will become witnesses in the minister’s trial for high treason. Accepting bribes is a crime. Soliciting any such bribes is also a crime. Attempting to corrupt a Moroccan official is a crime. Allowing operatives of a foreign government to pursue covert action in the kingdom of Morocco is more than a crime—it’s an outrage to be dealt with as severely as possible by the magistrates. I can’t say exactly what will happen to you and your men, but I can promise you will spend a long time in prison, many years, before the French government finally gets you out. Maybe you won’t survive that long; I admit conditions in our prisons are not ideal. But before you condemn my actions, consider this—what would your people do if they discovered a covert team of Moroccan mercenaries on the loose in France?”

Pinard could see the major’s point, but didn’t give the bastard the satisfaction of a response. The Moroccan soldiers formed a tight circle around him and escorted him out into the night.

7.

A
l Bab, Gateway to the Age of the Hidden Imam, He Who Dispenses Justice to the Unjustified, Thirteenth Eye of God, Beekeeper to the Hive of Paradise, etc. etc., lay on his back on a futon covered with a plush Narguiz carpet in the secret sex room of the pink cinder block bungalow that was his Holy See, getting a blow job from one of two skinny, naked young women, their brown skin pricked out with bee stings. Still wearing his voluminous djellah, its skirts coyly thrown over his head, the prophet revealed his modest package and fat, hairy white legs and the soft pink bottoms of his feet, hennaed to the ankles, which gave the effect of a pair of cheap Italian socks.

The other young woman kneeling above the two on the futon, her eyes wide with horror or lust or both, fanned the lurid action with a paper fan made to resemble a large tropical leaf. A red lightbulb covered with a shade confabulated out of another paper leaf added a further note of bordello depravity. The only missing elements, it seemed, were fuzzy velvet wall coverings and mirrors on the ceiling.

Smith pressed himself flat against the outside rear wall of the bungalow, next to a small window. He registered the scene inside with a single scalding glance, suppressing a mixture of disgust and vertigo. A little to the left, no more than an arm’s length away, the terrain abruptly dropped two thousand feet. Al Bab’s bungalow was perched on the edge of this precipice. From the village side one had the impression that the bungalow’s western facade opened only onto empty air. This was not quite true. A goat track, no more than thirty inches wide, twisted up the cliff face from below, leading to this unguarded metal door at the back of the house that was the door to Al Bab’s private playroom. By this route women and girls from the village came and went, serving their prophet’s earthly needs—a secret known only to a few of the Gateway’s closest lieutenants and the entire female Marabout population.

“Not a pretty sight,” Smith whispered, grimacing. “Asshole’s got three girls in there with him.”

“One of them is my sister.” Alia frowned. “I have been asked to join these unpleasant activities, but I have not.”

“Don’t,” Smith said.

“Those who join are given extra food, warm clothes. You must not judge.”

Smith nodded sadly. He understood. Men sought power for many reasons, all of them having to do with getting more sex than the next guy. Women went along with powerful men for the candy bars and nylons and jewels and summer villas on the Riviera, all of which might translate, just maybe, into an edge for their offspring, genetically speaking. It was downright Darwinian and certainly uncomfortable from an ethical standpoint and yet a part of the very weave. But where were those disinterested individuals, the selfless, the incorruptible, those heroes and patriots and reformers who did what they did with no thought for the excellent blow jobs they would receive or the shiny nylons they would wear at the end of their travails? All betrayed by the relentless dictates of evolution, caught in the entangling strands of their DNA like shrimp in the tentacles of a squid.

“What are we waiting for, Milquetoast?” Phillipe crawled up the path behind them, out of the shadows, on his hands and knees. His patchy balding scalp shone dangerously in the reflected red light of the hidden room. He was still unclothed but wore his ribs, starkly visible beneath a thin, yellowing layer of skin, like the armor of Don Quixote, whom he now resembled.

“Stay down!” Smith whispered. “You’re a walking lightbulb.” Suddenly, he couldn’t stop the trembling of his hands upon the FAMAS assault rifle.

“Calm yourself,” Phillipe said. “ ‘Courage is a virtue essential to the character of the happy man.’ I quote now from La Rochefoucauld.”

Smith put a finger over his lips and drew back to the window:

Al Bab was now in the process of struggling out of his djellah, ready for some flesh-on-flesh action. The plush white mound of his belly emerged first, his tiny erection sticking up from beneath his ample thighs, then his face—round, babyish, pale except for the hennaed square around his eyes, which resembled the mask on a raccoon. His features were set very close in a large, round Charlie Brown head. What an ugly fuck, Smith thought, like a fat albino seal! But that face! It was the face of the fat kid on the playground, a spoiled middle-class science nerd kind of a kid, prodigiously clever but socially limited. Someone who secretly felt entitled to all the riches and all the beautiful women of the world, but at the same time suspected himself entirely unworthy of the smallest crumb. Who hated himself for his desires and for the darker desires that fed his desires. He was, Smith saw immediately, someone he knew well: an American!

He gestured and Alia drew close, her eyes large and sad.

“Now’s the time,” Smith said.

“I do this because I love you,” she whispered. “And because I love the music you sing. Not just because you will take me to Milan someday and buy me beautiful clothes.”

“You saved my life,” Smith said. “Get yourself to Dahkla. Can you do that?”

“Dahkla is far away,” the girl said.

“But not that far,” Smith said. “Go to MINURSO command. Tell them what happened, request refugee status. They have to give it to you, it’s in the mandate. I will meet you there in Dahkla if I survive this mess. I will take you to Milan.”

“I’ll do what you say.” The girl nodded earnestly. “But first you must kill him. Promise me.”

Smith nodded, and she thrust forward suddenly and pressed her chapped lips against his and held them there for a long moment, without moving—a clumsy adolescent kiss that nonetheless had fire and need behind it. Then she pushed him away and scratched at the door. Her blunt fingernails marked out a kind of password well known to the women within.

“God go with you,” she whispered, a sob catching in her throat. And she turned and ran off into the darkness down the narrow trail, agile as a mountain goat. Smith watched her go. She was tough, hardened by life in the mountains; she might actually get to Dahkla. From there it was anyone’s guess.

Presently, he heard rustlings, murmuring voices. The door scraped open, a shaft of light fanning into the night. He put his foot against the red metal and shoved hard and in the next second was inside the room, the barrel of his FAMAS pressed firmly against Al Bab’s forehead. The two naked young women, startled or secretly pleased at the turn of events, didn’t scream, didn’t make a sound. They stood back motionless, watching.

“Get out,” Smith said to them and they gathered their threadbare robes and exited.

Colonel de Noyer stepped inside and bolted the door and there they were, the three of them—the Legionnaires and the enemy himself, the Gateway to the Age of the Hidden Imam. Smith looked down at him. The Gateway looked back up, flesh quivering, eyes rolling in fear, lips working but no sound coming out, his small erection instantly shriveled. Almost immediately there came a pounding on the door leading to the interior of the bungalow.

“Your pals better not come in here,” Smith said in English. “Better let them know it now, you son of a bitch!”

Al Bab pretended he didn’t understand. Sweat rolled from his forehead onto the pale paunch of his belly.

“Don’t give me that me-no-sabe bullshit,” Smith said. “I’ve seen your fucking Cap’n Crunch!” And he lifted the barrel from the pressure point and delivered a rattling blow to the Gateway’s forehead.

“Ouch!” Al Bab cried. “Goddamn it! That hurt!”

Smith raised the rifle for another blow, but the Gateway shouted a few quick words in Hassaniya and the pounding ceased immediately. Only the play of shadows seen beneath the crack of the door indicated anything moved out there. It was liked being locked in a house in the jungle with wild animals prowling outside.

“Your plan won’t work, whatever it is,” Al Bab said. He spoke American English with a flat, annoying accent that Smith instantly identified as Californian.

“We’ll see about that, asshole,” Smith growled.

“I don’t think you’ve thought it through—”

“Shut up!”

Smith tossed the FAMAS to the colonel, grabbed Al Bab by his greasy black hair, and dragged him across the room to a long, heavy table against the wall. On this stood the Gateway’s public address system; a microphone and receiver and the tangle of many wires. Also a couple of Dell laptop computers, an ink jet printer, a mess of papers, unopened mail delivered to an address in Marrakesh, a box of 9mm ammunition and a long, sharp-looking knife. The piles of books scattered here and there in English, French, and Arabic included admiring studies of Islamic culture published by Harvard University Press, an Arabic-English-Berber dictionary, Howard Zinn’s
A People’s History of the United States
, and several works on apiary culture and global warming. On the wall to one side hung a framed photo of Che Guevara shaking hands with Gabriel García Márquez and a diploma from Brown University whose florid calligraphy listed Ralph T. Wade III as the recipient of a Bachelor of Arts degree awarded in 1997, which made him exactly Smith’s age.

And stacked on a shelf above it all, a dozen unopened boxes of Cap’n Crunch.

“You like your cereal crunchy-sweet, don’t you, you little shit?” Smith said as he tied the blubbery, naked man to the table leg, hands and feet as hard as he could, using the printer cable.

Al Bab responded with a painful grunting.

“Shut up!” Smith said. “Not a sound!” And he stumbled back to the futon, feeling dizzy and weak. Not enough food, too much adrenaline. He put his head in his hands and tried to think himself around this situation, but could only think he could use a plate of French toast, a pile of breakfast links, and a beer. When he looked up again, he saw that Phillipe had folded himself into the far corner, enveloped once again in the personal fog of his madness. No advice would be forthcoming from him, not for the near future. After a while, Smith got up and took the gun from the colonel’s lap and brought it to bear once more on their new captive.

“O.K., Ralph,” Smith said, through his teeth. “Confess!”

“How do you know my name?” Al Bab said, surprised. “Are you CIA?”

Smith jabbed the FAMAS toward the prophet’s Brown diploma on the wall. “You’re such a fucking idiot!”

“Oh, yeah,” Ralph said.

“What’s up with the Cap’n Crunch?”

The mysterious prophet known as the Gateway to the Age of the Hidden Imam and also, apparently, as Ralph T. Wade III, shrugged to the extent his bonds would allow:

“Tastes good? Reminds me of home? Listen, you think you could loosen these a little? My hands are falling asleep?” He had that annoying California tic, a kind of Valley Girl mannerism that turned statements into questions, that left the end of sentences floating belly-up like a fish in polluted water.