I heard Brian turn the tap off and crack the seal on the bourbon bottle. “Eve?” he called, appearing in the doorway, the glass of bourbon in his hand.
He handed me the whiskey, and I took a sip. “What did you say?” I asked casually.
“Bruns Werner,” he said. “You mentioned the name at dinner. Do you think he had something to do with Pat?”
He was a good liar, almost good enough to make me doubt myself. I took another drink and shrugged. “I can’t remember. Like I said, it’s probably nothing.”
Kissing me on the top of the head, he reached up and unbuttoned his shirt, then pulled it and his pants off and laid them neatly on the back of a chair. “I think I’ll jump in the shower. You want to join me?”
“You go ahead.”
“If you change your mind…”
I smiled, stifling a shiver. “I know where you are.”
He ducked back into the bathroom, and I heard him turn the shower on and pull the curtain closed.
How did he know? I wondered. Setting the whiskey down, I crossed toward the minibar and grabbed the wine opener. Part of me just wanted to run, but another part needed to hear what he had to say. I opened the wine key and surveyed my options. There was a little knife on one end, but it was dulled from use. No, the corkscrew was my best bet. Making my way back to the open bathroom door, I flattened myself against the wall, took a deep breath, and started a slow count back from one hundred.
What else had he lied to me about? I wondered. Over the sound of the shower I could hear Brian humming, the tune too faint to be recognized. And what if he had lied? Hadn’t I lied to him, too? Hadn’t I been lying all along? The water ebbed and subsided, and Brian stepped out of the tub. I heard him grab a towel and rub himself dry. “I feel like a new man,” he called. “This place is worth the price of admission for the shower alone.”
Tensing my grip on the wine key, I widened my stance and braced myself. Brian’s feet sounded on the tiles, the muted slap of bare skin on cold ceramic. His face appeared in the doorway, chin and nose first, hair still dripping water.
“Werner,” I said. Wrapping my left forearm around his neck, I jammed the metal tip of the corkscrew into the berm of his carotid artery. “I called him Werner. I never said Bruns.”
Brian’s jaw flexed, the muscle tensing and contracting like something alive under his skin.
“How did you know?” I demanded.
He turned his head to look at me, and the steel pressed farther into his skin. “I’m sorry, Eve.”
“Who are you?”
He didn’t answer.
“Did I know you?” I asked. His skin was warm from the shower. I could smell the shampoo in his hair. “Did you know me before?”
He shook his head. “No.”
“Who am I?” I demanded.
“I don’t know.”
“Who are you?”
He didn’t say anything. I couldn’t hurt him, and he knew it.
I lifted the corkscrew from his neck and took a step backward. The steel had left a red mark on his skin, a single welt like a bee sting.
“I’m sorry,” he said again.
“Me, too,” I told him, starting for the door.
“Be careful, Eve,” I heard him say, as I stepped out into the hallway.
Too agitated to ride, I shook off the half dozen taxi drivers camped outside the Mamounia’s gates and started up the Avenue Houmane el-Fetouaki toward the Hotel Ali. It was late, too late to be walking, but I needed to get my thoughts together. Still gripping the wine key, I put my head down and marched forward. A car pulled up next to me, and I looked over to see one of the taxi drivers beckoning through the open window.
“Get in!” he called.
I shook my head and waved him off.
“It’s dangerous,” he warned.
“Go away,” I said, rudely.
“Crazy,” the man snarled in French, rolling his window up, speeding away.
I was crazy, I thought, crazy to have trusted Brian in the first place, crazy to have come to Marrakech. And yet, this was where the thread of my past ran out.
A car engine slowed behind me, and wheels pulled to the curb. Another taxi, I thought, keeping my eyes on the sidewalk. Jeezus, why couldn’t they leave me alone? Out of the corner of my eye I caught a glimpse of a black hood, a dark window. No, it wasn’t a petit taxi. The door opened, and a man jumped out. My friend from the train. Salim.
I leaped forward, my hand tight on the corkscrew, and broke into a dead run. Behind me, a second door popped open, and a man’s voice shouted in Arabic. Go, I told myself, powering ahead, but I wasn’t fast enough. A hand grabbed my waist, and I went down on the sidewalk, my shoulder cracking against the pavement, the pain knocking the breath out of my lungs.
I rolled over, swinging the corkscrew, catching a piece of Salim’s jacket, drawing a long red welt on his forearm. Then the second man was on me, his fingers hard on my wrist. He wrenched the wine key from my grasp, then grabbed my hair and pulled me up. There was more shouting in Arabic. The car rolled forward, and the second man shoved me inside, then climbed in after me. This is it, I thought, they’re going to kill me, and the last thing I saw before they slipped a sack over my head was the Koutoubia’s minaret against the black sky.
FIFTEEN
I’m with Patrick Haverman, on the other side of the mountains, in a casbah on the road to Ourzazate. Behind us is the moonscape of the Atlas, a jagged silhouette of treeless peaks. On one of the nearby parched foothills someone has written a message to God in white stones. Allahu akbar, it says, the letters several stories high, the script flowing across the rocky terrain as gracefully as if it had flowed from the tip of a giant ink pen.
There’s a dry wind blowing, a desert wind, clean as sand. It has a left a film of fine grit in my hair and on my skin. We’re on the roof, and above us is the most perfectly blue sky I’ve ever seen, a great placid lake of blue, stretching all the way to the northern tip of the Sahara. In my right hand I’m holding the Beretta.
It’s a familiar scene, this old and uncomfortable memory. Pat is hurt, bleeding badly.
“I’m sorry,” I tell him. “God, I’m sorry.”
He’s trying to tell me it’s okay, but I don’t believe him. This is my fault, I think. I’m the one who has done this.
“You have to go,” he says, and I know he’s right, but my legs won’t move. Now I’m down on my knees beside him.
“Go,” he tells me. “I’ll be all right. They’re coming.”
From far off down the valley comes the sound of beating wings, something powerful slicing through the air.
“I’m sorry,” I say for the last time. I lean down and kiss him, putting my hand against his chest.
“Stand up,” he demands, and I do. For the first time I notice a huge stork’s nest on one of the corner ramparts of the old Casbah, an engineering feat of sticks and mud large enough to cradle a grown man.
They’re coming, I think, there’s nowhere to go, and then I’m plunging down into the blackness of the Casbah, down into the earthy smell of it, the jumble of rooms and stairwells, this place that seems to have risen from the land itself.
I’m on a sailboat, on a lake somewhere, no, on an ocean. There’s a gray mist coming off the water, and my face is wet with it, wet with the spray our hull makes as it carves through the dark water. We are in a narrow passage, a channel closed on either side by two rocky islands. There’s an overwhelming sense of the primeval to this place, to the moss and ferns and rambling green brambles, and the little rain-wet beaches spilling down to the water, as if they are completely secret, untouched by humans. The water is so clear that I can see the giant rocks far below, the islands’ craggy foundations. The channel is dotted with rafts of kelp and white sea froth.