Flashback (26 page)

There was still the man, the American, the face at Les Trois Singes, and outside that Peshawar warehouse. It was he who'd had the sisters killed, who'd left me to die in that field. I was sure of it now. But what had I been doing in France in the first place?
You only said you would send someone,
Abdesselom had told me,
someone who would know our signal
. Had I gone to find that person?

*   *   *

It wasn't far from the pension to the main gate of the medina and the Grand Socco, a fifteen-minute walk at most. I slipped back into the anonymity of the burnoose and set out with just the leather bag, the passports, the Beretta, the pen drive, and what little money I hadn't yet spent, a meager haul, but far more than what I'd brought to that damp field. Hannah's clothes and pack I left behind.

The narrow streets of the Old City were jam-packed, the Petit Socco teeming with humanity, the patio at the Café Central overflowing. Monklike figures in burnooses scurried along, faces hidden under pointed hoods. Southern African whores called out from doorways. Voices whispered from dark corners,
Something special, my friend
. It had rained while I slept, but the shower had served only to heighten the smells of the Old City. There was a pervasive dampness and stink: the stench of wet donkey shit and cheap perfume, urine and bile, and the jumbled odor of spices, cumin, cayenne, black pepper, ginger.

I turned away from the Petit Socco and started down the rue as-Siaghin, letting the crowds carry me past the long-neglected Church of the Immaculate Conception, its gray face smeared with some twelve decades of black filth. Just past the church, the crowd knotted and slowed as the deluge of bodies fought its way out through the old arched gateway. Then suddenly we were free, streaming loose from the bottleneck into the Grand Socco.

*   *   *

It was closer to nine than to eight when the last number fifteen bus finally lurched into the square. The Grand Socco is where the Old City meets the new, where the wide colonial streets collide head-on with the medina's narrow alleyways, and as a result, it's a perpetual traffic jam, a tight clog of taxis and private cars fighting to get in through the old gate.

The bus crawled toward us, and the crowd that had been waiting picked up their bags and cases in anticipation of its arrival. A few passengers disembarked, but at this hour the flow of traffic was definitely away from the city. The bus filled quickly, and by the time I got on there were just a handful of free seats. I found a place near the back, next to a stylish young woman in a black turtleneck and jeans.

We rumbled out of the city, past the long dark stretches of beachfront, the Club Med and the white high-rise apartment buildings that lined the eastern shore. Gradually, the surroundings turned more and more rural, until stretches of dark scrub marked the distance between homes, and the road dropped sharply toward the sea on our left-hand side.

Ghandouri was not much of a place. The lights of a half dozen homes and a small café shone in the darkness. I asked the only other passenger to disembark with me for directions to the beach. He pointed hastily to a dark space in the cliffside, then disappeared quickly, the hard soles of his shoes tap-tapping on the road.

I could smell the beach, and I could hear it, the easy cadence of the Mediterranean, the brackish odors of fish and flotsam. I stood at the edge of the road for a moment, letting my eyes adjust to the darkness, then started toward the path. The little trail was overgrown with sea holly and evergreen shrubs, and I had to pick my way down to the water. But once I was there, the beach opened outward in a long expanse of sand and surf.

To the west lay Tangier, a crescent of light against the utter blackness of the sea. To the east, its silhouette just barely visible in the moon's dim light, was the lighthouse at Cap Malabata. A few lone ships winked from the Strait of Gibraltar, tankers fighting the powerful fist of the current. It was no place for a small boat, and yet in a few hours I'd be out on those black waves in a craft I could only hope would prove as large as a fishing boat.

The temperature had dropped substantially, and the sky was clear, the stars bright and plentiful as at the abbey. For an instant I was back in Burgundy, back in the yard, heading to the kitchen to ready the bread for its second rise. Down the hill the Tanes' dogs were barking, their call and response filtering up through the woods. Muffled by the stone walls of the chapel, the sisters read that night's psalm in unison, their voices catching the rhythm of the verse.

My God, my God, why hast Thou forsaken me?

Why art Thou so far from helping me, from the words of my groaning?

O my God, I cry by day, but Thou dost not answer: and by night, but find no rest.…

… But I am a worm, and no man: scorned by men, and despised by the people.

Shivering, I turned east and headed for the cliffs, for the bright beacon that burned at the base of the rocks. As I neared the fire, a cluster of dark and silent faces came into view, teeth and eyes catching the light, skin reflecting the flames. A figure beckoned me forward, and I stepped closer, pulling back the burnoose to reveal my distinctly European face to the all-male group.

Whether they had been told to expect an outsider, or whether they recognized me for what I was, someone, like themselves, simply looking for a way out, I don't know. But they shifted without hesitation, making a space for me in the soft sand near the fire's warm glow. Someone touched my arm, and I looked over to see a steaming cup of tea. I nodded my thanks and lifted the drink to my lips. The liquid was miraculously hot and sweet.

There were some two dozen men in all, all like the trio I'd seen earlier at the Café Becerra. And on other beaches? Doubtless there were more fires like this. What had Brian said that first night in Joshi's apartment?
You know how many Africans disappear into the Strait of Gibraltar each year?

I finished the tea and handed the cup back to the man beside me. I would make it, I told myself, looking out past the fire to the dark water. We would all make it. And then what? I would go to Paris. I would do what Helen had asked. This man would help me. Someone had to know me. And if not? The threads I had to follow seemed even thinner than the ones that had brought me to Morocco. My mother's face on a video, a man I didn't know. And there was Hannah Boyle as well, dead some ten years earlier. I had chosen her. Perhaps I had known her.

Someone started singing, and a handful of other voices joined in, the tune melancholy as a hymn or a lullaby. I closed my eyes, and I could feel the child, the shape of its body in my arms, the unsteady weight of its head.

*   *   *

It was very early in the morning when the boat came. At first it was just a single light, a spot blinking in and out of the chop. Then, slowly, the outline of the craft appeared, the boxy cabin, the prow and stern. The boat pulled up in the surf and weighed anchor.

I scrambled to my feet with the rest of the group, shaking the cold from my legs, stumbling across the sand and into the water.

“Quickly!” a voice called, and I felt a hand on each shoulder, two men lifting me onto the deck. I lay there for a moment, heart pounding, chest heaving, like a fish fighting the air. By the time I gathered myself enough to stand, we had hauled anchor and were moving. I looked back to the shore, but there was nothing to see. The moon had long since set, and the cliffs of Ghandouri beach were invisible in the darkness, the lighthouse at Cap Malabata only a memory.

When I turned to face northward again, the deck was clear, the open hatch my fellow passengers had disappeared through gaping like a dark maw. The captain stood silhouetted in the dim lights of the cabin's instrument panel, his hands on the wheel, his gaze firm on the invisible Spanish shore.

Beside the captain was a second man, his body tall and graceful, his hands crossed over his chest. He was turned in my direction, his face in shadow, but still I knew him without question. He started forward, surefooted on the pitching deck.

“Nebesky,” he called out, raising his voice to make himself heard above the noise of the engine.

I shook my head and took a step back, contemplating the dark waves, the distance to the shore, the beach receding farther from swimming distance each second.

“Nebesky,” he said again, coming closer. “You wanted to know my name. It's Brian Nebesky. My grandparents were Czech immigrants.”

The top buttons of his shirt were undone, and in the boat's pale running lights I could see the dark shape of a bruise on his throat.

“You were right,” he said. “I want to know.”

“They'll kill us both,” I told him.

Brian grinned, showing a row of perfect white teeth. “I'll take my chances.”

TWENTY-THREE

“How did you find me?” I asked.

It was too cold to stay on deck, and our presence seemed to be making the Spanish captain nervous, so we'd climbed down into the hold with the rest of the passengers. The cramped space reeked, of seawater and sweat born of fear, but it was warm and dry. A small propane lamp hung in one corner, shining on the tired faces of our shipmates.

“I figured you'd be trying to get out of the country, so I did some asking around. The Café Becerra was my second stop. Believe it or not, there aren't too many European women looking for illegal rides across the strait. I hadn't counted on you being alone, though.”

I swallowed hard, thinking of Helen.

“Who was she?” Brian asked.

“NSA,” I said, lowering my voice. We were the only ones speaking, and even at a whisper we seemed profanely loud.

“What happened?”

“Werner's men,” I told him.

“She's dead?”

“Yes.”

“Did you get a chance to look at the pen drive?”

I nodded. “Whoever hired you lied to you, Brian. It's not what you think.”

I told him everything, about Helen, the old videotape, the warehouse in Peshawar, and the empty crates. I told him about the woman, my mother, and the photograph in Werner's office, about the five missing years and why I'd come back, why I thought Pat had helped me at the Casbah, how I was taking the pen drive to Paris.

“Do you know who he is?” I asked when I had finished. “Whoever it is you're working for?”

Brian shook his head.

“There must be someone who contacts you,” I insisted.

“Everything is arranged on-line,” he said. “There's a chat room I go to. The times are agreed on in advance.”

“How do they pay you?”

“I've got an account, through a bank in Geneva; the money goes there.”

“When are you supposed to make your next contact?”

“Last night,” Brian said. “They'll know by now something's gone wrong.”

I wrapped my arms around my damp shins and set my head on my knees.

“Eve?” Brian asked.

“Yes.”

“You said Helen thought there was a leak in the agency, someone passing information.”

I nodded. “Why?”

“I'm not sure,” he said, “but if I had to guess, I'd say this was more than one person.”

“How many?”

Brian shrugged. “I don't know, but there's money here.” He hesitated a moment, letting his words gather weight. “Lots of it.”

The little boat took a wave across the port side and pitched uncomfortably. A collective shudder ran through the hold; then the craft found its equilibrium once more, bobbing upright like a cork.

I was suddenly exhausted, too tired to reason through the implications of what Brian had just said. “Helen's contact in Paris,” I told him. “He'll know what to do.”

Brian leaned back against the hold and closed his eyes. “I hope so,” he said.

*   *   *

Once, on a cold spring morning, I happened upon a freshly hatched swarm of baby spiders in the back of the abbey's henhouse. At first all I could see was a single dark stain and the ruptured puff of white gauze at its core. When I looked closer, each tiny creature resolved itself, legs scrambling purposefully across the rough wood boards, black arachnid body glistening in the coop's filtered light.

I stood there for some time, shivering in my thin sweater, and watched the swarm disintegrate, till each hatchling was gone and only the wispy shell of their abandoned home remained. Their disappearance seemed the greatest of miracles to me, the purpose with which they entered the world, their determination toward some unknown point. What a boon, I'd thought, watching the last body scuttle through a crack in the wall. What a thing to know, without thinking, the direction of your life.

When our boat weighed anchor off the wind-scarred Spanish coast and my fellow passengers leaped into the surf, I was immediately reminded of that spring morning in the henhouse. It was early, the dark sky broken only by a bloody smear of daylight on the eastern horizon. Brian and I stood together on the deck and watched the men start across the black gulf between us and the shore.

It was hard to imagine toward what they were headed, bad jobs and poor pay, a season of lettuce picking in southern France, a roach-infested apartment, a bed shared with two other men, each missing his wife. And yet each of these possibilities offered something better than what they had left behind.

“Let's go,” Brian said, as the last of the men slipped into the water.

He put his hand on my arm, and I nodded, raising the leather bag above my head. Brian did the same with the pack he carried. We'd both taken our boots off and hung them over our shoulders.

The water was frigid, the bottom rockier than I'd imagined, and I had to struggle to keep my balance. It wasn't far to the shore, twenty meters at most. Already some of our shipmates had reached land and were scrambling across the beach, disappearing into the dark scrub and up the rocky bluffs on the other side of the sand.