Hearing the grief in her voice I stopped feeling sorry for myself and tried to comfort her. Placing my hand on hers, I said, “I’m sorry.”
“We were quite close,” she told me, dabbing at her eyes with a small lace handkerchief. “He came to see me regularly after my father died and I was all alone.”
“When did it happen?” I asked.
“A couple of days ago. He was buried earlier this morning. The police think the killer was a burglar.”
“Did you tell them otherwise?”
“No. I decided to do nothing until you tried to contact him. He told me about AXE and a little about the Omega project”
“You’ve done the right thing,” I told her.
She tried a smile.
“How did it — happen?” I asked.
She looked past me into the square toward the Cafe Fuentes and the Boissons Scheherazade. “They found him alone at my apartment. They shot him, Mr. Carter. Over and over.” She looked down at the small table between us. “Je ne comprends pas.”
“Don’t try to understand,” I said. “You’re not dealing with rational men.”
The waiter came with our drinks, and I gave him some dirhams. Gabrielle said “Mr. Carter” again, and I asked her to call me Nick.
“I don’t know how they found him, Nick. He seldom left the apartment.”
“They have ways. Have you noticed anyone hanging around your place since your uncle’s death?”
She made a little grimace. “I was sure somebody was following me when I went to police headquarters. But it’s probably my imagination.”
“I hope so,” I murmured. “Look, Gabrielle, did André tell you anything specific about the place where he worked?”
“He mentioned some names. Damon Zeno. Li Yuen. I have never seen him in such a state. He was afraid but not for himself. This Omega thing they are working on there, I think that’s what frightened him.”
“I can well imagine,” I said. I sipped the thick coffee, and it was terrible. “Gabrielle, did your uncle ever mention anything about the location of the lab to you?”
She shook her head. “He flew here from Zagora, but that is not where the facility is located. It is near a small village down closer to the Algerian border. He did not mention its name to me. I suspect he did not want me to know anything that could be dangerous.”
“A smart man, your uncle.” I stared out across the square to the Bazar Rif, trying to recall the names of villages along the border in that area. A caramel-faced Moroccan wearing a knit cap passed, pushing a handcart of luggage and followed by a sweating, red-faced tourist. “Is there anybody else around here that André might have confided in?”
She thought a moment. “There is Georges Pierrot.”
“Who is he?”
“A colleague of my uncle, a Belgian like us. They were school friends in Brussels. Uncle André visited him just days before his death, after he had made his escape from the research facility. It was about the same time that he spoke to Colin Pryor.”
Colin Pryor was the man from DI5, formerly MIS, that Delacroix had contacted in Tangier to get to AXE. But AXE knew everything that Pryor knew, and that did not include the location of the facility.
“Does Pierrot live here in Tangier?” I asked.
“Not far away, in a mountain town called Tetuãn. You can get there by bus or taxi.”
I rubbed my chin thoughtfully. If Delacroix had gone to see Pierrot in the short time he was in this area, he might have told him pertinent things. “I’ll have to go see Pierrot.”
Gabrielle reached over and put her hand on mine. “I’m very grateful that you are here.”
I smiled. “Until this is over, Gabrielle, I want you to be extremely careful Call me if you see anything suspicious.”
“I will, Nick.”
“Do you work in Tangier?”
“Yes, at the Boutique Parisienne, on Boulevard Mohammed V.”
“Well, go to work every day as you normally would, and try not to think about your uncle. It’s the best thing for you and if anybody is watching you, it may lead them to believe that you are not suspicious about your uncle’s death. I’ll contact you after I’ve spoken with Pierrot.”
“I will be looking forward to it,” Gabrielle said.
She was not the only one who would anticipate the next meeting with pleasure.
That afternoon I walked down to the bus station and found out that it took over twice as long to get to Tetuãn by bus as by taxi, but I decided to go at least one way by bus because it would be less conspicuous. I was told to arrive at the station early the following morning to catch the Tetuãn bus at 6:30. The tickets could not be purchased in advance.
That evening I placed a call to Colin Pryor, the DI5 agent. There was no answer, even though the operator let the phone ring a number of times. I remembered that there was a recently established drop site in the newer part of town, and around mid-evening I walked over there and checked it, out. There was no message.
I didn’t like it. Delacroix dead, Pryor not available — I was beginning to smell a rat. And then, as is too frequently the case, something happened to confirm my suspicions. I was making my way back to the hotel, walking along a dark street with almost no pedestrian traffic. It was an area of new construction where shops were going into renovated buildings. Not ten seconds after I had passed a dark alleyway, I heard a sound behind me. I ducked low as I spun on my heel, and a silenced shot thumped in the blackness.
The slug from the gun dug into the brick of the building near my head and zinged off into the night. Just as I drew Wilhelmina, I saw the shadowy figure move quickly into the alleyway.
I ran back to the alley and peered down its black length. The man was not in sight. The alley was a short one and opened onto an interior court.
I started into it but stopped short. It was a kind of parking lot for several buildings. At the moment it was full of heavy equipment, including a big crane with a demolition ball on the end of a long cable. The crane looked American-made.
A wall of one building to my left had been partially torn down, and there was a lot of rubble around. The shadowy figure was nowhere in sight. But I felt he was there somewhere, hiding in the rubble or equipment, just waiting for a second, better opportunity to get me.
Everything was deadly quiet. My eyes swept over the black hulks of heavy machinery as I moved past them, but I saw no human shape. It was possible that my assailant had gone into the rubble of the damaged building. I went slowly toward the demolished wall, watching my footing carefully.
Suddenly I heard the engine break the silence with its rumbling roar. I whirled around quickly, at first unable to tell which piece of equipment the sound was coming from. Then I saw the boom of the crane move and the enormous iron ball raise slowly off the ground. Blinded by the crane’s headlights, I squinted at the cab of the machine and could just barely make out a dark figure in there.
It was a clever idea. The crane stood between me and the alley exit, and I was trapped in a corner of the building complex with no place to hide. I moved along a back wall, holding the Luger ready.
I aimed toward the cab of the crane, but the ball was between the cab and me and was swinging toward me. It came with surprising swiftness and seemed as big as the crane itself when it arrived. It was between two and three feet in diameter and had the speed of a small locomotive. I dived headlong into the rubble, and the ball swung past my head and crashed into a wall behind me. Glass shattered and stone and brick crumbled as the metal ball demolished a section of the wall. Then the boom of the crane was pulling the ball back for another try.
The ball had missed me by inches. I reholstered Wilhelmina and clambered out of the rubble, spit-ting dust and swearing to myself. I had to get around that damned crane somehow, or I would be smashed like a bug on a windshield.