I spit at him as I had at Salim, and he dropped his hands and moved away. Something flared inside him, anger, disgust.
“I told you in Marrakech,” he said coldly. “We will keep you here until you remember.” He took a handkerchief from his pocket and wiped his face.
I looked up at Werner, and his stone gray eyes looked back at me. Something had happened to that young man at Les Trois Singes, I thought, something terrible and dark, to turn him into this person.
“Who am I?” I asked.
Werner cocked his head, considering the question. “A traitor, my dear,” he said, “and a murderer.” Then he turned and walked out the door, leaving me to my nightmares.
I lay back on the cot and said a silent prayer, this time for something to keep me from remembering. I was afraid, afraid to die in that awful little room, afraid I might not have the strength to lie if I did remember. I half believed what Werner had told me, that it was someone else who had had the sisters killed. But still, I couldn’t imagine any good would come from whatever information he was looking to find. Werner was a dangerous man, that much was clear, and I didn’t want anyone else hurt because of my cowardice.
The images that came to me that night were gruesome and violent, a horror-show loop of my own worst conjurings. I was back on the roof with Pat, while he slowly bled to death in my arms. I put my hands on his stomach, and the blood covered them. My clothes were sticky with it. It was in my hair. The smell was deep in my lungs.
I was in a hotel room, somewhere cheap and bland, with a dead man in the corner. He had been shot in the head, and his eyes were flung wide open, as if he’d seen the bullet coming. I was in that horrible warehouse again, heart pounding like a piston as I flew down the stairs.
I was at the abbey, inside the chapel, where the sisters had been slaughtered like sheep. There was blood on the altar and on the communion rail, blood pooling in the burnished wood curves of the pews, blood spattered on the old stone floor. Someone was singing the Magnificat. My soul magnifies the Lord, my spirit rejoices in God my Savior.
I was in my room at the Continental. On the bed was a Koran, the book open, the five letters from my ferry ticket forming the first line of the page. Kaf. Ha. Ya. A’in. Sad. Then the memory was ripped from me, and I opened my eyes to the low ceiling and narrow walls of my cell.
The man in the brown burnoose didn’t bring breakfast the next morning. Salim and Hassan came instead, and in place of food they brought more desmopressin, a full syringe, and another bottle of water. This was the way it would be from now on, I realized, no respite, no time to recover, just a steady assault until they wore me down. When they were gone, I lay on the bed and wept. Then, my thirst overwhelming my judgment, I took a long drink of water and settled in to wait for the drowning to come.
They came again that evening, with more of the same. What I saw hadn’t changed for some time, just sharpened in detail, the same dark reel running over and over again. My sickness gave me something to focus on besides the memories, and I drank more water, grateful now for the vomiting and the shuddering in my muscles, grateful for something, anything, even pain, to distract me.
Sometime in the middle of the night there was a quiet, almost inaudible knock on my door. I sat up and strained my ears, certain I’d imagined it, but the sound came again, just one short rap, then a key scratching tentatively at the lock. Standing, I moved toward the far wall and braced myself, rallying what strength I could. I had come to expect the morning and evening visits, and my foreknowledge was all that kept the desperation of my fear at bay. Now I could feel the angry jaws of panic snapping at my throat.
Was it Salim, I wondered as the latch clicked open, come to seek revenge for whatever it was that burned like a pyre in the depths of his eyes? The door swung forward, and I raised my fists. Had Werner decided to try more persuasive means of memory stimulation? If this was my last chance to fight, I would take it.
But it was not Salim. It was the man who had brought me breakfast the morning before. He had on the same brown burnoose. He opened it as he came toward me and unfurled a second hooded robe from the folds of his own. “Put it on,” he said.
I nodded, slipping my arms into the arms of the cloak, pulling the hood over my head.
The man put his hands to his lips and stepped through the doorway. Motioning for me to follow, he slipped his babouches off and started, barefoot, down the long dark corridor, the white skin of his heels winking like two dim beacons. I obeyed, creeping behind, ducking around corners, up one short flight of stairs and down another, weaving through the labyrinth of hallways and rooms, the cerebral folds and cambers of the Casbah, the two of us silent and stealthy as the whip crack of a synapse sparking.
We came out from the depth, out from the heart of the great mud palace, and I could smell the desert air. Somewhere far off an aging car engine sputtered along. There was an archway up ahead, my guide’s pointed hood silhouetted against the blue-black sky, and beyond, the wildly improbable shapes of the date palms, the strength of their slim bodies defying all reason and gravity. The only tree, I thought, that could bend flat to the ground during a hurricane and spring back unscathed. I had seen this, yes, I could remember it, the wind strong as a god, the sea heaving itself up onto the shore.
Just a few more feet, I told myself, but as I stumbled forward toward the opening I heard a man’s voice, a gruff command in Arabic. I froze, shrinking back into the darkness. My guide turned his head and spoke back to the voice. An easy response, laughter, and the answer was easy as well. A second silhouette appeared, then a match sputtered and flared, and I could smell tobacco.
I pressed myself against the wall to keep from shaking, then reached up and steadied my lower jaw with my hand to still the clacking of my teeth. They smoked for what seemed like an hour, two hours, an entire lifetime of smoking, until, by some blessed intervention, a new voice called out. The interloper grumbled, an underling cursing authority, then tossed his cigarette to the ground and turned away.
My guide watched the man leave, then flicked his own cigarette into the dirt, turned back, and waved for me. “Quickly,” he whispered. “Hurry.”
I pushed off from the wall, willing myself forward. The old man grabbed my arm and pulled me along, scurrying across the gravel-and-sand drive that surrounded the Casbah. Then we pitched forward into the desert forest of the palmeraie.
“How far?” I panted. I could run, but I needed to know just how much of my flagging strength to give each breath.
My rescuer stopped short and raised his arm. “There,” he said, pointing through the palms to a tiny speck of light that seemed to me to sit on the far horizon.
I nodded. “Let’s go.”
We ran in silence, moving through the trees toward the lone beacon. It took the very last of my energy to keep myself upright and mobile. The old man ran ahead, every so often stopping to wait for me to catch up. And then, suddenly, we were there, bursting out of the palmeraie and onto the hard-packed dirt of a road. I could see now that the light was a lantern, a goatskin lamp held aloft by a second hooded figure. Beyond the figure was a large truck.
My guide whistled, and the light was quickly extinguished. The figure moved, the coarse fabric of his burnoose rustling as he did; then the truck’s door clicked softly open, and the engine started.