“Montez!” the old man said.
I climbed into the cab, the door was closed behind me, and the truck lurched forward. “Wait!” I yelled, panicking as the old man slipped away behind us.
Unheeding, the driver barreled ahead. He switched the headlights on, and the road ahead of us sprang into view, two washed-out ruts. “It’s okay,” he said. “He’ll be okay.” Then, peeling his hood back, he turned to me. His face was haggard, hollowed out by the green lights of the dash. It was Brian.
SEVENTEEN
I slept for a day and a half, freed from the assault of memory, swimming in the clean, dark waters of oblivion. I was aware of a woman who came and went, her hands tattooed with vines and stars, who brought me water and hummed while she arranged my sheets.
The room I was in was stark, the walls whitewashed plaster, the furnishings simple and clean, just as I wanted my mind to be, scrubbed and rinsed like the abbey kitchen when Heloise and I came down to start the bread. Out the open window I could hear the sounds of civilization, the distant buzz of mopeds, the intermittent rush of automobile traffic, the occasional human shout.
On the evening of my second day there, I woke to find Brian watching me from the far side of the room. I blinked my eyes and looked at him, still uncertain of what he’d delivered me to, still angry at his betrayal.
“How are you feeling?” he asked.
“Where am I?”
“Somewhere safe,” he said, coming forward, taking a seat on the edge of my bed.
“Where?”
“A friend’s house, in Ourzazate.”
I sat up and faced him. “Who are you?” I demanded, the same question I’d asked that night in Marrakech.
He shook his head. “Later,” he said. “You still need to rest.”
I reached out and slapped him. “Now,” I yelled, and I hit him again, my fists pummeling his chest, all the fear and exhaustion of the last few days finally finding a target. I hit him until my anger and frustration ground me down; then I leaned my head against him and sobbed.
He didn’t say anything, just let me lie there, even after I’d stopped crying, till the only sound in the room was the ticking of the ceiling fan, and from far off, the muted thump thump of feet on leather, the sounds of a soccer game.
“Tell me who I am,” I said, finally. I lifted my head and wiped my face with the heels of my palms.
“I’ll tell you what I know.”
There was a knock on the door, and the woman appeared with a tray. I was so hungry that the smell of the food made me nauseous. Gagging, I waved her away.
Brian spoke to the woman in Arabic, and she lifted a bowl of harira, a chunk of dry flat bread, and a bottle of water from the tray and put them on my bedside table. Then she left us, taking the rest of the food with her.
“Did you learn Arabic at Brown, too?” I asked when she was gone.
Ignoring my question, Brian picked up the soup and handed it to me. “You have to eat something,” he urged, settling into the room’s one chair.
I took a sip of the broth. It was hot and thick, rich with cumin and chilies. “How did you know where Werner had taken me?”
“Fakhir,” he said. “He works for us.”
“The old man?”
Brian nodded but offered no further explanation.
“Is he in danger?”
“No. He’ll be fine.”
“And the ‘us’?”
He was silent for a moment, as if contemplating a badly snarled thread, as if trying to decide which knot to loosen first. “It’s not important,” he said.
I set the soup aside and rolled out from under the covers. “Fuck you,” I told him. I was tired of his game, tired of twenty questions and no answers in return. “Where are my clothes?” I asked, scanning the room.
“In the wardrobe,” he said calmly.
I opened the cabinet and took out my clothes. They were clean and neatly folded. It had taken all my strength to stand, and now I could feel the room spinning around me.
“Sit down,” Brian said, “and hear me out. If you still want to leave, I’ll drive you to Marrakech myself.”
“From the beginning.” I sat back on the bed and eyed him skeptically. “You’ll tell me everything, starting with who you work for.”
He pressed the tips of his fingers together and looked down at them, as if expecting to find the answer to my question there. “I work for the Americans,” he said.
“CIA?”
He raised his eyes toward mine. “Unofficially, yes. I do contract work, freelance, all strictly under the radar.”
“You’re a spook?”
He smiled grimly. “Just like in the movies. You know, the agency will disown any knowledge of you if things go wrong.”
I let what he’d said sink in for a moment.
“Don’t look too shocked,” he said. “After all, we’re in the same line of work, you and I.”
“What’s that supposed to mean?”
“You really don’t know, do you?” There was a note of hostility in his voice.
I shook my head. “I told you. I don’t remember.”
“You were an independent contractor, like me. An arms specialist, by all accounts. Acquisition, mostly: foreign matériels, cargo divertment, engineering phony end-user certificates, stuff like that.”
“That’s how Werner knew me, knew Leila, I mean.”
Brian nodded. “Bruns Werner’s an old-school arms dealer. He started out contracting for the Pentagon during the Vietnam War.”
Vietnam, I thought, rickshaws and women in white shifts, and Easy Rider at the Saigon cinema. Les Trois Singes. “Something tells me Werner no longer has a working relationship with the American government.”
“We made him rich in Afghanistan,” Brian said, “but he saw the end of the cold war coming before we did and moved to greener pastures. He’s a bottom-feeder now. That’s where all the money is, the real shitholes of the world: the former Soviet republics, the South American drug states, Africa, the Balkans, the Middle East. You were involved in a couple of transactions with him back when he was still getting us Chinese matériels.”
“Not fond memories from what I could tell.”
Brian’s face lightened slightly. “Not many fond memories in this business.”
“He claims I stole something from him. Information, he said. That’s why they had me at the Casbah; they wanted me to remember.”
Brian nodded. “A little over a year ago we picked up some intelligence indicating Werner and a man named Hakim Al-Marwan were ironing out a deal. Only it wasn’t a run-of-the-mill transaction.”
“Why not?”
“Well, for one thing, there were no weapons involved. It was information Al-Marwan was getting.”
“What kind of information?”
Brian paused.
“I’ll walk,” I warned him. “I swear to God I’ll walk out of here, and you’ll never see me again.”
He cleared his throat and sat forward in the chair. “Al-Marwan’s more than just a class-A asshole. He’s an old friend of the CIA’s from Peshawar, one of the Afghan alumni. He fought with the mujahideen; then, after the Soviet pullout, he came home to Algeria and helped start the GIA.”
“What’s the GIA?”
“Just your friendly neighborhood Armed Islamic Group. They specialize in village massacres, with the odd highjacking or car bombing thrown in for kicks.”
“You still haven’t told me what Werner was selling.”
“A few years ago Werner contributed to the KGB retirement plan and got a bundle of documents for his good will. As far as we know, it was mostly outdated schlock. A sort of wholesale collection of things that wouldn’t be missed. Municipal plans, satellite photos of power plants and major ports.”
“You said ‘mostly outdated schlock.’”
“There was one gem in the mix, and Werner knew it. Like finding a Monet at a garage sale.”
“And the gem?”
“Detailed intel on every nuclear power plant in the northeastern United States.”