“Who are they?”
“I remember both names because they were in the news here fairly recently. You will remember the uprising of the generals? The coup was put down by King Hassan in a bloody reprisal. The two military men that André saw were among the ones accused at first, but later they were cleared. Many believe that they were the real leaders of the coup and that they are even now waiting their chance to make another attempt to overthrow the Moroccan government and establish a leftist regime. They are General Djenina and General Abdallah,” Pierrot said. “It is believed that Djenina is the leader.”
“So Djenina promised protection to the laboratory for a limited period,” I guessed aloud, “in return for financial backing from the Chinese for a second and more efficient coup.”
I still had to have a better description of the location of the facility. I could not go down to the border and roam around in the desert for a week trying to find the lab. By then it might be too late.
General Djenina knew where it was located. And if he was like most army men, he had a written record of it hidden away somewhere.
“Where is this Djenina now?” I asked.
Pierrot shrugged. “He commands an imperial army in this area and has his headquarters in Fez. But I have no idea where he makes his home. It would undoubtedly be near Fez.”
“And it’s his home where he would keep anything important, away from official eyes,” I said. I set the brandy glass down and stood up. “Well, I want to thank you for your cooperation, Monsieur Pierrot.”
Pierrot rose to see me to the door. “If you are going to Ibn Djenina,” he said, “you had best take care. He is a ruthless, dangerous man who wants to be dictator of this country.”
I extended my hand to the Belgian, and he took it. “I promise to be careful,” I said.
As soon as I got back to Tangier, I went to the Velasquez Palace to clean up and make another call to Colin Pryor. When I entered my room, I stopped short.
The place was a mess. My one piece of luggage was open, and the contents were strewn all over the floor. The bedding was in shreds and the drawers of the chest had been pulled out and flung across the room. It seemed someone wanted to know how much information I had at this point and thought my belongings might tell him. But the action was also a terror tactic, a show of muscle. When I went into the bathroom, I found another note, in the same scrawl as in Madrid, this time taped to the glass of the mirror over the washbowl. It said:
You’ve been warned. The girl is next. Read tomorrow’s newspapers to her.
I didn’t understand the last part. I stuck the note into my pocket, went to the phone and called Pryor. This time I got him. His accent was distinctly British.
“Good to hear from you, chappie,” he said when I had identified myself to him in code.
“Same here. I’m seeing the sights. How about taking them in with me tonight? We could meet around 11:00.”
“Sounds good. I have to stop to see a friend first, but I can meet you after that.”
“Right. See you later.”
I hung up after we’d arranged to meet at a small sidewalk restaurant on Mohammed V, a site used previously by both DI5 and AXE. Then I called Gabrielle Delacroix and was relieved to find that she was all right. I asked her to join me for dinner at Detroit Restaurant, in the casbah, at eight and she agreed.
My last call was to Avis Rent-A-Car, to see whether they would be open for a while. They said they would. I took a taxi and rented a Fiat 124 convertible. The car had five forward gears as standard equipment and was just right for driving in the streets of Tangier. I drove up the hill to the casbah, through the narrow winding streets of the medina, and met Gabrielle at Detroit. The restaurant was perched atop an ancient fortress building that had been a sultan’s palace. Three walls of the dining area were glass and gave an incredible view of the Straits of Gibralter. I found Gabrielle at a window table. She was white-faced and looked very different from the way she had sounded on the phone.
I sat down at the low round table and studied her. “Is everything all right?” I asked.
“I turned on the car radio on the way here,” she said in a monotone.
“Go on.”
“There was a brief news item from Tetuãn.”
My stomach tightened automatically. “What was it, Gabrielle?”
The green eyes looked up at me. “Georges Pierrot is dead.”
I stared at her, trying to grasp what she had said. It seemed impossible. I had left him just hours ago. “How?”
“The police found him hanging from a short rope in his garage. They are calling it suicide.”
“I’ll be damned.”
“I am very scared, Nick.”
Now I knew what the note had meant. I was just about to speak when the waiter came along, so I stopped and gave him our orders. Neither of us was very hungry, but I ordered two pots of Moroccan couscous with a light wine. When the waiter left, I took the note from my pocket.
“I think you ought to see this, Gabrielle,” I said, handing the paper to her. “I found it in my hotel room.”
Her eyes skipped across the message, and as they did so, a glaze of raw fear came into her eyes. She looked back at me.
“They are going to kill me too,” she said hollowly.
“Not if I have anything to say about it,” I assured her. “Look, I’m really sorry that you and Pierrot had to get mixed up in this. But that all happened before I got here. Now that they know about you, the only thing we can do is take special care that you don’t get hurt. You may have to move out of your apartment for a while until this blows over. I’ll register you in a hotel this evening.”
She had gotten control of herself now, and there was no more hysteria in her eyes. “My uncle fought these men because he knew they must be fought,” she said slowly. “I will not run away.”
“There’s no need for you to do any more than you’ve done already,” I told her. “I’m leaving Tangier soon to find the research lab. You’ll be alone, and the only thing you have to do is stay out of sight for a while.”
“Where is the facility?” she asked.
“I don’t know yet, but I think I know somebody who can tell me.”
We finished the meal in silence, left the restaurant, and got into my rented car. We drove through the ancient archway to the casbah, over the rough cobblestones, back down through the medina toward the French Quarter. But before we got out of the medina, we found trouble. I had been followed.
It was on a narrow, dark street, away from the shops and people. We were almost at the Old City gates when it happened. A boy came up the street from the opposite direction pulling an empty handcart, the kind used for luggage by the hotel porters. There was plenty of room for us to pass, but suddenly he veered the cart sidewise in front of us, blocking the street. Then he ran into the shadows.
I jammed on the brakes and jumped from the car to yell after the boy. In the next instant a shot barked out in the night from a nearby balcony. The slug ripped into the roof of the car beside my left arm and spent itself somewhere inside. I heard Gabrielle give a sharp little yell of fright.
I ducked to one knee, going for the Luger as my eyes sought the blackness of the balcony. I saw a shadow move. A second shot rang out and tore at the sleeve of my jacket, smashing window glass in the car beside me. I returned fire with the Luger but did not hit anything.
“Get down!” I yelled at Gabrielle.
Just as she obeyed, a shot exploded in the night from the opposite side of the street. The slug ripped through the windshield of the Fiat and missed Gabrielle’s head by inches. If she had been sitting upright, it would have killed her.
I fired back toward the sound of the shot, then swung back behind the open door of the car. I heard a voice shout loudly in Arabic, calling to someone behind us. They had laid a trap for us and had us boxed in.