Someone had arranged the accident, or someone had taken advantage of it, that much was certain. Call him Chiba. He needed a name. Perhaps Chiba’s men had seen him following Qazai; perhaps they had seen him waiting in his djellaba for their meeting to finish. However it had happened, they had seen him, he was sure; sure, too, that soon he was about to meet the man he had been so blindly pursuing.
The clanging slowed a little as his arm began to tire, and he wondered how long he had been keeping it up. Ten minutes? Two? He clicked the lighter on again and looked at his watch, thankfully unbroken, which showed that it was half past ten, almost four hours since Qazai and Senechal had passed him in the passage. He continued for a minute or two, but his good arm now hurt almost as much as the rest of him, and he reluctantly conceded that he had to stop. Faint from standing, having had no water for several hours and no food for longer, he leaned his head against the door and finally gave in to the rushing stream of fear that this mindless activity, his one source of hope, had kept in check. How, he asked himself, had it come to this? Slowly, staggering a little and feeling profoundly sick, he dragged his feet over to the ledge where he had started, lay down, and fell at length into a shifting, churning half-sleep.
AS HE CAME IN and out of consciousness he grasped at a series of jagged, fractured dreams. Children, not his own, played in unknown landscapes where the heat of the sun and its blinding light were so strong that they filled each scene with silent menace.
The grating of a key turning in the door brought him up from sleep, and a second later a flash of bluish white light woke him fully. A black figure was in the doorway, saying something he didn’t understand. All he could do was blink at the brightness.
“Up,” said the figure. “Now.”
Webster pushed himself up on his elbow, but before he could sit he had been grabbed by his other arm and pulled erect. He could smell stale tobacco and old meat on the man’s breath, and on the edges of his silhouette there was the fuzzy outline of a beard.
“Come.”
The man’s hand took strong hold of his upper arm and led him out of the cell, down a corridor whose bare cement walls were lit by a single fluorescent tube. There were no details, no features that might suggest the building’s function. Nor was there any noise, but for their footsteps, harsh on the concrete floor. They passed three other doors—wooden, he noticed, with no locks—on the same side as the cell, before the man turned down a second corridor, knocked firmly at a door on the right and without waiting for a reply went in.
This room was whitewashed, unbearably bright under another single strip light, and smelled of heat and mildew. As Webster entered, hobbling and squinting, he could make out one man sitting behind a desk and another standing against the wall opposite the door, both wearing suits—one black, one gray—and white shirts with no tie. They were only superficially alike. One was lanky, all thin limbs improbably long, and he sat at the table like a crab trying to fit itself into too small a space. His suit was rumpled and in patches gray with dust, his face elongated and hollow.
The other man was shorter, taut with muscle, the skin on his face tight against the bone and his posture sprung, suggesting great energy barely contained and waiting impatiently for release. Black and gray hairs showed at the base of his neck, which was flexed and unyielding, like thick cable, and there was three days’ beard on his face. He held his hands by his sides, tightening them slowly into fists and then releasing them, his knuckles white. Webster’s body registered a fear of him at once, a physical knowledge of his viciousness. A pair of metal-framed sunglasses covered his eyes, and Webster knew from the moment he came into the room that he was the one in charge.
The guard shoved him onto a chair, and with a nod from the lanky man was dismissed. For a minute no one said anything. Against every message sent by the insistent aching in his head and the violent pain in his side Webster tried to breathe regularly, as deeply as he could, and to establish some sense of calm.
“Why are you in Morocco?” The thin man spoke. His accent was heavy but unplaceable, his voice languid, almost quiet, and while waiting for the answer he cocked his head on one side, staring at a point on the desk.
“I’m here on business.”
There was a long pause. The thin man stared at his finger as it made an endless figure-of-eight over the wood. He hadn’t yet looked Webster in the eye.
“What business?”
The best lie was as close as you could make it to the truth. “Research.”
“Of what?”
“A businessman. In Marrakech.”
“Name?”
“My name?”
“His name. You are Webster.”
How did they know it? His passport was at his hotel, carefully hidden. He had no credit cards on him. They had his phone, but his phone was locked. Unless they had found Driss as well. That unpleasant thought had not struck him before.
“I can’t tell you that.”
The thin man’s finger stopped circling. Out of the corner of his eye Webster sensed movement and turned stiffly, too slowly to see the flat of the other man’s hand connect with the side of his head with improbable force. A rush of air broke into his ear with the noise of a thunderclap and he fell from the chair onto the floor.
He lay there for a moment, his cheek pressing into grit, dazed and shocked, the only stubborn thought in his head that he must be close to something devastating to be receiving this sort of treatment.
The man in sunglasses stood over him, his face silhouetted against the bluish fluorescent light.
“Up.”
The word was hoarse, sudden; Webster felt the need to obey it, but could not. He lay still for a moment, processing the shock, before lifting his head off the floor, feeling the muscles in his neck straining with the work. This time he saw the man move. In one swift motion he drew his foot back and with great precision kicked Webster hard in the side, in the soft flesh between hip and ribs, filling his body with a great, vivid pain that seemed to swirl with color and brought nausea surging into his throat.
Webster rolled onto his side, curling up to protect himself, for the first time feeling real fear inside the pain. This man knew what he was doing. He had the discipline of the professional, the economy of effort, the singular focus. He had done this many times before. Shadow fell across Webster and he knew that the man was standing over him, calculating which piece of him to work on next.
But instead he took a step closer, bent down until his mouth was an inch from Webster’s ear, and when he spoke his voice was a harsh, quiet rasp that Webster had to strain to hear through the ringing and the roar.
“Tell me why you are here.”
Webster tried to speak, but had no words. The taste of acid was on his tongue and his mouth was clamped shut. It wouldn’t open; his body was no longer taking commands.
“Up.” The voice was still quiet, but it had power; Webster felt it occupy him. He made a weak effort to sit.
The man said something in his own language, and at his command his colleague came out from behind the desk, put a hand under Webster’s arm and together they pulled him up, dumping him heavily onto the chair, where he sat slumped, conscious only of the pain and his own dead weight.
Again the voice in his ear, fierce but strangely delicate, and so close he could feel its breath. “Tell me who you are.”
With effort he managed to shake his head. There was a pause, during which he sensed the man moving slowly away from him.