Webster walked, east, toward the dawn, a bottle of water in one hand, the other ready to flag down the first car that passed.
KAMILA RINSED THE CLOTH once more in the water, now a dirty brown with Webster’s blood, carefully wiped the wound, gently pulling the hair apart, and turned to Driss.
“Take this. Get me some clean water and a fresh cloth.” She looked down at Webster, who was sitting on a stool with his shirt off. A dark purple bruise, lively with greens and yellows, had spread out from the ribs on his left side, up to his armpit and down to his waist; he expected to find another where he had been kneed in the thigh. His breathing was still tight and his head felt like it was wrapped with bands of spikes. Kamila had given him sweet mint tea and he sipped at it using his good arm.
“You provide a comprehensive service,” he said, looking up at her and smiling, with effort.
“You need to go to the hospital.”
“It’s a cracked rib. I’ve had one before. Someone drove into the side of our car when I was twelve. There’s nothing you can do about them. They just hurt.”
Kamila snorted. “There could be internal bleeding.”
Webster watched Driss return carrying the bowl of water and smiling a canny smile that seemed to say you don’t know who you’re dealing with.
“Sorry I woke you,” he said.
“I’m always up at dawn,” said Kamila. And then, pointedly, “How was Ike?”
“Awake. Not particularly happy.” That hadn’t been an easy call, not least because there was so much he hadn’t said and so much he still simply didn’t understand. By the time he had persuaded a car to stop, had reached the outskirts of the city and had found a phone signal, dawn had broken over Marrakech; in London the sun would have been up for at least an hour. He had expected a furious response, not at being roused but at being misled, or left uninformed—even, perhaps, at being wrong; but what he hadn’t banked on was that Ike’s love of a secret on the verge of being revealed was greater than everything else. In the end he had been stiff, but increasingly concerned, and when Webster had finished giving him the fractured outline of events had told him to call Kamila on her home number and to call him again when he had slept and eaten.
Kamila didn’t reply, but her silence meant something. She put the cloth back in the bowl, took a large glass jar, opened it, and into the palm of her hand poured some white powder, which she began to sprinkle from her fingertips onto the wound. It stung keenly and Webster winced.
“He didn’t know I was here.” He looked up at her.
“Keep still. This is alum. It will keep the wound clean.” She sprinkled more powder. “I did wonder.” Inspecting his head closely she gave a small grunt of satisfaction and screwed the lid back on the jar. “There was something you weren’t telling us. And you seemed alone somehow. There,” she stepped back. “We’ll leave that open to the air. I’ll put a dressing on it later. Now Driss will make us eggs and you can tell me what exactly you have got us involved in.”
Throughout all this Webster hadn’t really stopped to consider how his preoccupations might affect these people, and the realization that he had put them at risk made him feel ashamed.
“Sorry,” he said. “It was thoughtless of me.”
“Don’t worry.” She wasn’t smiling but her eyes were lenient. “If I wanted security I would have become an accountant. But I want to know what to expect.”
Webster was surprised by how hungry he was. While they sat in Kamila’s kitchen, Driss brought them flatbread and fruit and eggs, and Webster told them everything he knew, and everything he didn’t.
“But what I don’t get,” he concluded, “is why he’s involved. He’s not an arms dealer. The money he’d make is a pittance to him. I thought for a while he’d sold his soul to the wrong people, early on. Taken the devil’s money. But he’s in a different league now. He could have bought them out ten times over.”
“Maybe they won’t let him.”
“Maybe. But why persecute him now?”
Kamila nodded, thinking. “Maybe he has always done it.”
“What do you mean?”
“How a man makes his first million is always the most interesting story. Has he explained that to you?”
Webster thought back to those inadequate conversations in Mount Street and Como. “No. No, he hasn’t.”
“A lot of people got rich at that time. After the Shah went. Everybody wanted weapons. The diaspora. The revolutionaries. Maybe Darius Qazai was in the right place at the right time. Maybe he has just kept on doing it.”
Webster considered this for a moment. “All I know,” he said, “is that he owes them a lot, and they won’t kill him until they get it. And then they will.”
“They seem happy killing everyone else.”
They sat in silence for a few seconds. Kamila spoke first.
“What are you going to do now?”
Webster rested his head on his hand and pinched his temples. He thought about the various components. Senechal would have been found: Kamila had called an ambulance for him as soon as Webster had contacted her. Qazai might already have left the country.
“You should sleep,” said Kamila. “And then you should leave. Go back to England. Get rid of these people. You don’t need them in your life.”
Webster looked up at her and shook his head. “Sadly they’re already in it. And I’m in theirs. I need to see that man again.”
Kamila frowned. “Why?”
“So he stops trying to kill me. He thinks I know too much.”
“You probably do.”
“I do and I don’t.”
Webster picked up Senechal’s phone from the table and looked at it for a moment. Now there were two numbers stored on it: Kamila’s, and the anonymous number. He called it, and it rang twice.
“Oui.” A quiet, harsh voice.
“This is Ben Webster.”
“You have wrong number.”
“We need to meet.”
“I don’t know you. Good-bye.”
“If you don’t meet me my friends in the CIA are going to learn all about Chiba, Kurus and your relationship with Mr. Qazai. That doesn’t have to happen. I will be by the Air Maroc ticket office in the arrivals hall of Menara airport at ten o’clock. Come alone.”
The line went dead. Kamila and Driss were looking at him across the table, their expressions somewhere between concern and incredulity.
“You should be going home,” said Kamila.
“Never show a bully you’re weak. And, besides, I don’t have my passport.”
20.
DRISS AND WEBSTER DROVE to the airport together, Webster in one of Youssef’s suits: dark gray, about half an inch too short in the limbs, tight under the armpits and around his waist. Kamila had put a discreet bandage on his head wound and after breakfast he had showered, inspecting his battered body in the mirror with a sense of curious detachment. On his thigh was a bright red patch of burst blood vessels and around them a growing storm of purple bruise. Dark bags hung under his eyes and when he walked it was with a heavy limp in his damaged leg.
They made one stop. Just short of his hotel, Webster ducked down in his seat, and a hundred yards further on Driss pulled over and turned to him for instructions.
“In the wardrobe there’s a safe. My passport is taped under that. My credit cards are there too. You’ll have to slide the whole thing out of its hole. If you can, get me a shirt.” Youssef’s was at least two sizes too small. “Here’s the key. Room fourteen.”
“How many rooms?”
“It’s quite big. About thirty. Go straight up the stairs and turn left. No one will notice you.”