Her husband was not so discreet, he added. The General was notorious for the girls he had cached from Marrakesh to Tangier. Who could blame a beautiful wife for a discreet arrangement of her own?
Al-Fassi could easily follow her directions, he said, but even though it was dark and a fine rain was falling, my Western face and clothes were not advisable. Big face beaming, he made for the door. “I shall produce the cloak of invisibility, O sublime master.” Another gag-a-minute Moroccan comic.
When he returned, I removed my jacket and he engulfed me in an enormous hooded jellabah. It smelled of camel. As I stumbled after him out one of the Sultan’s private exits, it clutched at my feet and legs.
I got the hang of it — had to or lose al-Fassi swiftly gliding, like an outsize wraith, through the twists and turns of the almost silent medina.
When the sun sets, most Fez-medina Arabs retreat indoors and close all shutters, making the tight slanting passageways as dark as mine shafts. Sliding and slithering over uneven cobblestones made slick with rain, I quickly lost all sense of where we were. Occasionally we passed shapes as anonymously shrouded as we and once I flattened against a building to let someone astride a tiny donkey squeeze by.
Haroun al-Fashad wouldn’t have been as clumsy, but I felt a kinship with that other master of disguise. I began almost to hope for a glimpse (at a safe distance) of the 40 thieves prowling, scimitars at the ready.
Abruptly al-Fassi stopped before a massive carved door and told me he’d wait nearby. I felt around for a bell, gave up, and hammered with my fist. The great door groaned open. A hawk-nosed manservant in a red tarboush and a costume like a Shriner’s looked me over warily. I shoved the hood back off my head. He nodded gravely and bowed me inside.
He helped me struggle out of the jellabah and hung it on an oak peg. A trace of sandalwood floated in the air; I hoped it masked the smell of camel.
He led me to a small interior courtyard roofed with glass, two stories up. Glowing copper and brass and hanging carpets and soft cushions were everywhere. The Shriner produced the mint tea of welcome, poured it from an antique silver pot, then glided away on red slippers with turned-up toes.
I’d taken one swallow when Madame appeared. No jellabah, no veil. Just a sheer something vaguely Moorish and some jeweled slave bracelets.
She sank to a cushion next to mine. “My house is your house, ami.”
Naturally it had occurred to me that this femme might be fatale, that the whole Arabian charade was designed to relieve me of the formula without the formality of a cash payment. Well, it would take thumbscrews; I’d memorized it. “Merci, madame. But, you see, there are complications—”
“Of course, mon cher MacLean. I am a complicated woman. But all will become sweetly simple, enchantingly simple.”
I followed that — more or less. Cash for goods delivered can add up to a sweet simple deal. But, enchanting? I tried again. “It’s a question of substituting a natural for a synthetic.”
“There will be nothing synthetic between you and me.” To prove it, she pivoted with natural grace, easing her body across mine, and gently drew my head down. The sheer something slid from one shoulder.
“A — about the formula,” I said huskily into the black cloud of her hair.
“You and I will have our own formula, cheri.” She tilted her head to look at me. “Ah, when you broke into my room, driven by tempestuous passion, I knew.” Her laugh was silvery. “Your face that night — so stricken with desire, so foolish, so frightened at your own temerity. I knew then that we were destined to create a new formula, a formula of love, my foolish faun.”
Great God. Déja vu? Was I in the wrong room with the wrong woman again? “I really have to see Louis,” I ventured. “Details to work out.”
“Who is this Louis? Can he matter? Not when you are you and I am I.”
Well, hell, I went along with the gag. I kissed her. Wouldn’t you?
Hammering at the street door jolted us apart. She sprang to her feet. “Quickly, cheri. You must flee.”
“Flee? Where? How? Why?”
The hammering grew thunderous. The hawk-nosed Shriner glided in, looking questioningly at Madame. “Show monsieur another exit,” she ordered, eyes blazing but voice controlled. To me, “Horrible men hired by my husband. He exposes me to ridicule by his public womanizing, yet because I am Moslem I am his property — go, cheri, fly. If these men seize you, I promise you will never emerge from the medina. Fly.”
Swiftly the Shriner led the way, handing me my jellabah just before I ducked out through a low door somewhere in the rear of the house.
They had thought of that. Two of them. They charged.
Their eyes were accustomed to the dark, but all I could make out were two onrushing blurs. I flung the heavy jellabah at the blur on my right. It enveloped him, tangled his legs, sent him sprawling. I heard the clang of a knife on the cobblestones. The other blur lunged.
I spun away. His knife grazed my hip. Swinging back, I set myself, right-crossed him where I estimated his face was. Bulls-eye. I felt his nose splat.
I heard the first one coming at me from behind. Diving for the ground, I rolled, frantically groping for the jellabah. Had he recovered his knife?
I never learned. Shouting joyfully, “I am here, O victorious warrior,” al-Fassi hauled number two thug up from where I’d dropped him, slammed him into number one with such force that both toppled instantly and lay still.
“Hamad, you scrabbling desert scorpion,” I said, once again minus my usual aplomb. “Was it your idea of a boffo gag to tip off the General’s thugs? Never mind, I’m going to feed you in bite size to the medina rats. Slowly.”
“Mac, Mac,” he said reproachfully. “Where is your sense of humor? I did not dream you’d be attacked. Just frightened a little. Besides, you should not have been off with a woman when you and I had business to do.”
We were in my room. I had cleaned up, patched the graze on my hip, and sent al-Fassi to fetch Hamad. He’d arrived smiling and impeccable from his shining shoes to his bravura boutonniere, a big red carnation. Quelque chose de rouge. Something red. Louis Bigard’s chosen person.
He had the cash from Bigard. But I hadn’t earned it yet. So, after a few more comments on the nasty end that inevitably awaited all impractical jokers, I sent him off to insist on a meeting with Bigard.
By the time we all got together at the machinery shed, Bigard was pacing irritably. When I told him he had to supply my chemist friend with rhodinal brewed from Le Domaine’s geraniums, he refused flatly.
But my instructions on how to handle the clandestine shipments, plus my hard-nosed “No rhodinal, no formula,” brought him reluctantly around.
I reeled off the formula. “Merde!” he said when I came to benzyl acetate, an artificial jasmine. “Impossible,” he snapped at adipic acid, a synthetic fixative. “Natural jasmine and pure musk in such quantities will bankrupt me.”
It wouldn’t help much, but I offered to cut my fee because I hadn’t had to pay my chemist. Sourly and without thanks, he accepted. Cash changed hands.
He’d stew a while. But he’d use the two synthetics. Today’s CEO knows when to stick to time-honored natural ways and when to compromise.
The next day I said an affectionate goodbye to al-Fassi and unleashed the Lamborghini. As I drove, I pondered. And finally I realized why I’d thought Madame was Bigard’s cutout rather than Hamad. Erreur, my erreur. The old masculine-feminine trap. In French there’s little rhyme or reason why one noun and its pronouns are masculine and others feminine. But I’d always figured that with people, il was he, elle was she.